Worldship Saga
by isoner
Summary: An alien war machine raids Earth, taking citizens as hostages. The Star Force leads the quest to recover them. Set after Final Yamato.
1. Chapter 1

Star Blazers: Worldship Saga

Author's Notes: Standard disclaimers apply as I do not own Space Cruiser Yamato, Star Blazers, the Yamato, Argo or any of the characters save for the few who are original. Yumi is not an original character, she has appeared in Yamato before, bonus points for any who can place her. I am using Star Blazers names for everyone who had one save for the ship… it can never be anything other than Yamato for me now. I am doing a final quick rewrite to alter some unnecessary details as I post this, please forgive me if any slip past from the previous draft. More detailed notes as to why and the evolution of this fanfic will appear as a note for the last. chapter that I post.

**Prologue**

Whenever the Yamato went out on her missions, none had more hope or faith that Yamato would return than young Jordy Venture. The boy's faith was in more than simply the ship, he had just as much faith in the Yamato's Navigator/Pilot, his brother, Mark Venture. There was little wonder that the young boy's world had just been destroyed. Yamato did not return home, and neither did Mark.

Jordy looked out at the now frozen floodwaters that acted as an orbiting crypt for Yamato. Earth was safe but what is safety when the source of your hope is now dead and you are left on a ship of people that feels so empty and hopeless? In his heart he felt a part of him wasn't there anymore. Why couldn't things stay the way they were? The feelings of grief and hopelessness hammered his brain. He tried to be strong, to be like his brother and not cry, but it didn't seem to work. Everything he saw was through the blurry haze of tears.

The ship that carried the mourners "docked" along side the frozen waters that the mourners had taken to calling the Yamato Sea. The outline of the two shattered parts of Yamato was visible through the ice. In the remains there was a vague stirring wind. Yamato was never just a ship, it always seemed to have a touch of life.

Deep within the ice, the body of Captain Avatar remained frozen where he died. Suspended in ice, his hand still holding the Wave Motion Gun control, gently slouched over, he looked as if he had just dozed off. His hat hid his eyes like he wasn't really gone.

A light shown through the ice, illuminating both the Captain and the bridge. The light emanated from three maidens, beautiful as angels, who approached the Captain's body.

They moved freely, unhindered by the fact they were moving through solid ice. Such things did not effect them, as they were the stuff of legends. Like the sisters who had taken away King Arthur. They approached the old Captain, and looked at him in an odd respectful way. Like maybe they were related in some celestial sense they were taking him home with them to the place where old heroes go until needed once more.

Then, the light was gone. The maidens were gone. The Captain was gone. Only the ship, ice, and darkness remained. If the ship seemed that much lonelier, no one noticed.

On the surface, Yamato touched each of the mourners somewhere so deep inside them they couldn't explain it to anyone who hadn't felt it too. Nothing they knew or understood could explain that moment when they were all joined in sadness.

Wearing a variation of the Star Force uniform with a black arrow on the chest and a black stripe on each shoulder, the Honor Guard stood on the ice, escorting a line of caskets. The first of the caskets represented Captain Avatar, it was empty since the Captain's body had not yet been recovered. The second casket was not empty. It held the body of Mark Venture.

Watching the long line of caskets move, Jordy felt torn between the desire to see his brother one last time and the horror of seeing his still, lifeless corpse. He was both filled with pride and with grief for the empty chair that would be at the supper table where his brother would no longer sit. Yamato's victory tasted like ashes.

The eyes of everyone on Earth and on the ships were red with tears, people in funeral garb of different nations cried as final words were said and their beloved heroes disappeared into the vacuum of space to float free in the void to their final resting place.

That was the first of three ceremonies. The second ceremony would take place two days later as markers for the crewmen who had died, and a marker for the ship itself, would be added to the Hero's Hill monument on Earth. The third ceremony would also take place at Hero's Hill, as Deputy Captain Wildstar married his longtime girlfriend, Nova Forrester.

Five years later...


	2. Chapter 2

**Star Blazers Worldship Saga**

**Chapter 1**

On New Gamilon, Deslock's throne room was majestic, and of a suitably impressive size, but not overly gaudy. The walls, floor and support pillars were all the same gold color as the throne itself, but the only decoration was the gentle curve added to the pillars and ceiling. A red carpet stretched from the main doorway to the throne, with the only other color in the room being from blue video panels on the walls.

A single figure sat upon the throne, his eyes closed in memory. He did not see the room around him, but instead saw the Yamato leveling its guns as the Yamato made its final assault on his original Gamilon home world. He saw the Yamato as it responded to his SOS call, to save both him and Starsha from an unknown enemy fleet. He remembered kneeling before the bust of Captain Avatar, unable to find words to express his admiration for the man. He remembered watching the Yamato fight against fate, as the nose of the ship burst towards space, before sinking back into the waters of Aquarius.

A second figure approached him, "What troubles you this evening, Leader Deslock?"

Leader Deslock of the Gamilon Empire glanced up at the interruption. It was only Pleb, his new civilian advisor.

While most of Deslock's advisors were military stock, standing ever at attention, never failing to look dashing in their uniforms, Pleb was an idealistic civilian whose awkwardness gave away exactly how young he really was. Deslock found that he could tolerate the youth because of the one thing they had in common. Deslock was also an idealist.

"Memories, Pleb. They don't concern you." Deslock in many ways was the ideal. In addition to his strength of character, and his nobility, he was by anyone's standards extremely handsome, his neatly combed blond hair standing out sharply next to his blue skin. His own military style uniform accented his angular features perfectly

During a coup attempt two years before Deslock had been forced to reexamine his leadership style when it came to dealing with the civilian population. The civilian advisor, Pleb was a concession he had made to the members of the rebellion he had come to respect, although that had not saved them from execution. The presence of Pleb was a constant reminder of mistakes he had made, and swore never to repeat.

Pleb, eager as he was to serve, did not know when to back down. "I seek only to understand you, Leader Deslock, so that I may better help you to understand our people."

Deslock almost smiled. "Your arrogance tests me, Pleb. This day, five years ago, I watched the sinking of my greatest enemy."

"That must have pleased you, then."

"No, Pleb. It is never pleasant to watch the instrument of your reclamation die."

The answer served to confuse Pleb. Whenever he thought he had his leader figured out, he would find a few more facets to Deslock's personality. Deslock seemed cruel, ruthless, and dispassionate, on one side and caring, sympathetic, and filled with a fiery passion on the other.

Deslock's eyes snapped open at the sound of a distant rumble. "Pleb, go instruct the people to get into the shelters."

"Leader Deslock? Surely its only thunder..."

"NOW!"

Without another word, Pleb bowed and left the room, hurrying to complete his task.

Talon had the reputation for being everywhere, and having worked his way up through the ranks to being Deslock's right hand man, he worked hard to maintain that reputation. He made the rounds as often as possible, both to make sure he had the most updated information possible, and to keep the men on their toes.

The alarms began just as he entered the Planetary Defense control room. "Report what is happening!"

The officers manning the stations jumped, as much at the sound of Talon's unexpected voice as they did at the sound of the alarm. In response to their own training, they leapt directly into their jobs.

"Numerous unidentified objects are descending on the capital city."

"Launch Fighters. Identify the objects immediately, how many are there exactly?"

The radar officer did a quick count, "Twenty-- No, Thirty of them."

"Our fighters are on the way."

While another officer took all of the available information from the scanners and performed a few quick calculations. "They appear to be a type of assault shuttle... based on mass, speed and size, they are only holding half their cargo capacity."

"We are reading incoming fighters."

Talon glared at the radar screens and other readouts. He knew what they reported, but didn't believe his eyes. "Incoming from where? How did they breach our defenses?"

The radar officer turned to him looking just as confused. "They are just appearing out of nowhere."

It wasn't impossible, that Talon knew. The Gamilons themselves had a device called SMITE which was capable of instantly transporting planes, missiles or mines from one location to another. Talon himself had used it, but never for a planetary assault. Some form of stealth technology could not be ruled out either.

The plot map on the main view panel was instantly replaced with the image of Deslock's face. "Talon. What is happening?"

Talon came to attention. "Leader Deslock. We are under attack. Our fighters are currently engaging thirty assault shuttles with fighter support, launched by an unknown enemy, from an unknown location."

"How is this possible?"

"We are still investigating, but I suspect the enemy may have access to a SMITE device."

Although his face was impassive, Deslock's eyes narrowed at the news. "Send out our troops and tanks. The enemy must not get a foothold on Gamilon soil."

"At once, Leader Deslock." Just as quickly, Deslock's image disappeared from the view panel.

The Gamilons were a race of warriors, so when the shuttles touched down the people rushed out to face their attackers. They threw bottles, bricks, or even mud at the invaders. The attacks made by the civilians were just as ineffective against the invaders as it would have been if they had been armed.

The shuttles carried elite shock troops, the Death Wolves. They wore gold armor, and carried large rifles that were as much for show as firepower. Their helmets had elongated noses that gave them a wolf like appearance, complete with ominous red eyes.

One by one they stepped out of the shuttle. The first of them having to take a half step back as a brick hit his helmet. Raising his gun, he fired several shots into the crowd. Each shot claimed a victim.

Panicked, the crowd dispersed, running through the city.

The Death Wolves did not peruse the running people, instead they spread out and systematically began moving throughout the city.

They entered each house or building, going through each room. They were not gone long before they each returned to their shuttles. Each individual Death Wolf herding a man, woman, or family back into the shuttle.

At the first sign of an organized counter attack by the Gamilon forces, the recall signal was sent to the Death Wolves.

Each of the assault shuttles carrying not only their compliment of Death Wolves, but also filled with civilian prisoners, quickly lifted back off the planet.

Report after report flooded into the Gamilon control room. Talon and General Peck, in charge of Defense, sorted through them as best they could. It was, at best, total chaos.

"Enemy shuttles climbing..."

"Fighters still engaged..."

"All reports are the same. Each shuttle landed, took as many civilian hostages as possible, and left at the first sign of counterattack."

"Home fleet moving to intercept... Home Fleet has just disengaged!!

"My God!"

The control room was consumed by a sudden silence as all eyes looked to the main view panel which now showed the orbital view of the planet. Where only seconds before had been empty space, a huge space fortress waited, collecting the shuttles.

Over the years, Talon had delivered bad news to Deslock on numerous occasions. He was never able to predict how his leader would react, or respond, to the news. The only thing to do was to give the news, then wait and see. So Talon, flanked by Peck and the rest of Deslock's generals, waited.

Out of the corner of his eye, Talon noticed Pleb keeping to the sideline, which was proper. This was a military matter, the youth had no jurisdiction except in civilian affairs.

Deslock listened to the report calmly, eyes closed, with his back turned to his Generals, lest some hint of emotion show. This was a crisis, and weakness would not be allowed. Gamilon was once again at war. He turned sharply, his red and black cape snapping to give an added flare to his movements.

"This is the supreme insult!" Deslock seethed, "Dispatch the Home Fleet at once! Track them down. Recover our people. Once our people are safe, I want no enemy left alive."

Off to the side, Pleb's own face held an expression of the same righteous anger. He nodded support of Deslock's words in spite of himself.

General Auctor stepped forward. "We are tracking the enemy fortress, Leader Deslock. It is heading towards the Human planet Earth, perhaps they are the ones who launched this attack."

Deslock spoke. "I cannot believe that the Humans are behind this."

Auctor bowed his head in deference to his leader's opinion, "Then, with General Peck's approval, I will order the Home Fleet to intercept at once."

"Leader Deslock," Peck ventured, "I hesitate to point out but sending the Home Fleet away will leave our home world open to attack."

"Apparently, we were already open to attack, General. And I expect you all to discover how they were able to evade our early warning systems so that this will never happen again.

"Send out the Home Fleet to challenge the fortress directly, but send another ship directly to Earth. That ship is to make absolutely sure the humans are not behind this, and to warn them that the fortress is headed their way. But above all, the humans are not to destroy the fortress while our people are still aboard."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 2**

The only place harder to get permission to visit would be Area 51. It had taken months of filing special requests, asking or begging for favors from more people than he ever wanted to know, in both military and political circles, but the end result was worth it. He was there, and that was enough, even if they were limiting his visit to just a few minutes.

The anticipation was unbearable, he finally resolved to hold his breath for a few seconds just to make the sound of his own breathing through the respirator of his space suit go away.

Finally, the door in front of him slowly opened to reveal the Yamato Sea. It was a truly amazing site to see, the sun shined brightly in the sky, and the Earth was visible in magnificent detail just over the horizon. The ice that made up the ground reached that horizon and shined a bright white under the sunlight.

He steeled himself before stepping out onto the ice. The ice asteroid was larger that he had remembered, although it couldn't have changed very much. It was vast, but that was not why he was there. Jordy Venture had come to the Yamato Sea with a definite purpose.

He kneeled down, looked into the ice until he thought he could make out the outline of the long buried Yamato deep near the center.

In his helmet, Jordy smiled. "Well, Mark, I finally talked them into letting me come up and see you. I know you are here, not at the memorial down on Earth. You will always be with Yamato.

"I just wanted to let you know that I'm graduating from the Academy tomorrow and--"

Just then, Jordy's suit radio came to life with the words he hoped would be late in coming. "Jordy Venture, your time limit is up. Return at once."

Well, that hardly seemed fair. "OK. I'm coming. . . Talk to you later, Bro."

Jordy stood to return to the bunker for his trip back to Earth when something caught his eye. In the blackness of space, a section of space seemed to ripple slightly. Then with a flash, a trio of glowing ship silhouettes appeared there, then merged into a single Gamilon battleship.

Hardy, Conroy, Sgt. Knox, Royster, Orion, Mark Venture, and over a hundred other names and headstones surrounded the proud statue of the late Captain Avatar. Each headstone was about two feet tall with a name written on it, and the face that went with that name carved next to it. But more than that, each stone held memories that none of the onetime crew members of the Yamato would ever forget.

Doctor Sane, a short round man with very little hair, shouted at the top of his lungs, "Fall in!"

The clusters of people separated and formed ranks in front of the old doctor. Derek Wildstar and his wife Nova were at the front, flanked by their two children, who did their best to come to attention like their parents.

If the old doctor was amused by the children in the crowd that tried to emulate their parents, he did not show it. These get togethers were about the only time when the Doctor remained formal.

"Although it has been five years since Yamato was destroyed; we, the crew of the Yamato and their descendants, renew our vow never to forget you," the doctor shouted.

"Your sacrifices have not been in vain. Earth has once again grown strong, with a new fleet to protect it. Our relations with other worlds have been prosperous, with no wars.

"Even while fortune shines on us, we will never forget the struggle it took to achieve our good fortunes. We will not forget you.

"Salute our fallen comrades!"

As one, everyone crisply raised their right fist up to their hearts in salute.

The red squat robot, IQ-9 busied himself by joining in a game of tag with the children. They would duck in and around the headstones, and the gracefully awkward robot would follow. Young Miyuki Wildstar and her younger brother Mark tried to circle wide around IQ, but the robot extended his arm several feet in front of them.

In a fit of giggles, the two children turned and ran back towards the rest of the adults in their attempt to escape from the robot.

Wendy watched as the children suddenly started rushing towards her. They rushed past her in a flash, jumping over the picnic basket at her feet, and almost knocking her off balance. IQ-9 followed a second later, reaching a hand out and smacking her firmly on her bottom.

"IQ!" she screamed, while taking cover behind her husband, Homer.

"Wendy is it! Wendy is it!" the robot joyfully cried out. "Bet you can't catch me!"

"I bet I can!" she hollered, and took off after him.

Homer would have reassured her about the robot's friskiness, but was too busy laughing. "He is never going to change."

Dr. Sane and the others at the table agreed. "True, but at least now he won't just be picking on Nova."

"It means she is now officially part of the family, nice going, Homer," Derek Wildstar added, while Nova smiled an agreement.

On the table, Dr. Sane's old cat mewed, then curled back up and returned to her sleeping.

The youthful communications officer blushed. After so many years of his teasing Wildstar over Nova, he was unprepared for compliments about his own relationship.

Desperate to change the subject, Homer looked around and saw a familiar aircar parking nearby. "Hey, looks like Sandor and Kitano finally showed up.

Homer knew Sandor since their first mission on Yamato, Sandor with his close hair cut, and a noticeable lack of eyebrows had been the science officer who could always be relied on to save the day by inventing some new device.

The heavily tanned Kitano he didn't know as well. Kitano had trained on the Yamato when they went back to Iscandar after the Comet Empire had been defeated. Wildstar had seen something in him, and trained Kitano as a bridge officer. The training had apparently paid off, since Kitano was now the Captain of his own ship. Homer tried not to be too jealous, especially since Wildstar didn't seem to mind being captain of a patrol ship, while Kitano was given the fleet's Flagship.

Kitano called out to them. "Sorry we were late. Apparently Sandor couldn't get his own ride and had my ship called in as his personal space taxi."

Homer was surprised at how much Kitano had matured... when they first met, Kitano was so ridged that he had not sense of humor at all.

"How do you like captaining the Andromeda II?" Wildstar asked.

"The job is a lot harder than you made it look, but she is a good ship," Kitano replied.

"Certainly better than her predecessor," added Dr. Sane with a raised bottle.

Nova turned to the doctor, "Be fair, Dr. Sane. Under Giddeon, the Andromeda served well up until the end."

"Her operational design is certainly better than her predecessor," Sandor interjected.

"I'll drink to that!" Cried out the doctor, waving around his Sake bottle. "Anyone care for some more 'spring water?'"

"What about you, Sandor?" Wildstar asked with a smile. "I haven't gotten any reports from you recently, what black projects have you been busy with lately?"

"Derek, you know better than to discuss business here."

Sandor smiled at both of them. "Its all right, Nova. He knows I can't discuss it. Besides, it would ruin the surprise. What have you been up to?"

"Nothing new..." Wildstar responded, sounding slightly depressed.

The "beep beep" of pagers started to sound.

Homer jumped as his own pager went off. He checked it to confirm. A recall signal, he had to get back to headquarters immediately. As he stood to find Wendy to explain that he had to leave, he saw Wildstar, Dr. Sane and virtually everyone else checking their pagers as well.

Something big must be happening, he thought.

As he walked down the corridors of the Earth Defense Headquarters, Derek Wildstar was unable to shake the old frustrations. Why was it that they gave him top level clearance, and that he had earned the respect and trust of all the high level officers so that they valued his opinions enough to seek him out, but the only command position they had offered him in the last five years was that of a Patrol Ship. With a level of control that he wish he could have had in his youth, he forced the resentment down and rushed to the main control room.

"uh, Sir?"

He didn't recognize the young woman who was trying desperately to keep up with him, if she hadn't spoken, he never would have noticed her. He supposed she was the one who took Nova's job when she took leave to take care of the kids.

"Yes?" He asked.

"Commander Mizutani wanted me to give you an update on the situation."

"Proceed." He did not slow down.

"A Gamilon battleship just warped into orbit, and they are upset about something. We don't know what. The Gamilon captain's name is Noble. The Commander wanted you to handle the talks since you have the most experience dealing with them."

Wildstar came to the door, and paused before opening it. "Thank you."

The young lady smiled, and then nodded for him to go on through. "You had better go on in, the communication is in progress."

Taking a deep breath, Wildstar entered the control room. Commander Mizutani was standing at the center of the raised platform, sitting next to him, Homer was running the communications board. All eyes in the room were fixed at the large view panels that took up the entire far side of the room.

Captain Noble's face filled the screen. Like all Gamilons his skin was light blue, but his head was mostly bald, and looked like he should have been wearing a monocle. The pride and arrogance about him reminded Wildstar of the Gamilons of old. The arrogance was not just in his manner, it also carried very clearly in his voice.

"Leader Deslock demands to know why you have attacked him, and kidnapped our people! You must answer for your crimes!"

Not quite like old times, Wildstar thought. They didn't use to be the sort to talk first, but then he and Deslock didn't use to be friends.

"Captain Noble. I am Captain Derek Wildstar. You may tell Deslock that we have taken no action against him or his people."

The sneer that appeared on Noble's face spoke volumes. "Leader Deslock... believes you. I do not. I think I would do better if I took your world apart piece by piece, until I found our people, and all of you were dead."

Wildstar faced him with a cold stare. "Are those the orders Leader Deslock gave you?" It was a gamble, he was counting on the blind loyalty that Deslock inspired. Most of the Gamilons he had encountered had been ruthless, but true patriots.

"No, Captain. They are not. I am to warn you, so you may defend yourself. We plotted the course of the force that attacked us. They are headed here. But, since they are holding Gamilon citizens on board their ship, you are not to destroy it. I will preserve the lives of those Gamilons, and I can destroy you if you place their lives in jeopardy."

The screen went blank.

Wildstar turned to the Commander, "I would take him at his word, Commander."

"I will, but if it comes to it, I will risk another war with Gamilon in order to protect Earth. Homer, mobilize the fleet."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 3**

High Lord Sodoman held himself with the air of a man completely assured that his destiny lay in his own hands. To him, failure was not an option, only something rumored to exist in storybooks. That he also knew that his race would die if he could not find a solution, but that too would be impossible.

He would find that solution. As the God Emperor of his people, he could do nothing else.

Before him, three tiny holograms stood at attention, waiting to report to him. He stood over them arrogantly, and paced as he thought.

"Malathin of the Worldship," he commanded. "Give me your report on the Gamilons."

The hologram that represented Malathin who was watching similar holograms on his own ship, stepped forward to deliver his report. "The Gamilons are a proud people, the specimens are taking longer adjusting to their new environment."

"I care nothing for their comfort or well-being, only their suitability" Sodoman interrupted.

"Yes, Lord. Preliminary testing was inconclusive... I believe that they may be useful to us, but they are not the end all cure that we are seeking. Humans are rumored to be very similar to the Gamilons, I would like to examine both races at the same time. I expect that a comparison between them will be very useful to us in reaching our goal."

"Very well, proceed to Earth and acquire human subjects at once."

"But--" Dieldrin started to object, but then fell silent.

Sodoman gave Dieldrin's hologram a long hard look, daring him to continue, but Dieldrin remained silent. Sodoman turned to Antimony instead. "How do operations in the Gamilon sector proceed?"

"Things are progressing excellently, High Lord. The Gamilon Home Fleet has been taken care of. Our forces are now preparing to take one of their outer colony worlds... I believe the planet is called Uther."

Sodoman smiled, his white teeth shining sharply against his parchment grey skin and gold armor. "Very good, Antimony, cleanse the world Uther of Gamilon life."

Sodoman directed his full attention to Dieldrin, "Are you prepared to begin operations against the humans?"

"Of course, High Lord." His tones were crisp, and full of confidence. "May I ask a question, High Lord?"

"If you wish," is what Sodoman said, but his eyes threatened otherwise.

"Although their territory is small, the Humans are very dangerous, so our original plan called for our waiting until after the Gamilons were eliminated before involving the humans. We did not want to risk a war or too many fronts."

"That was the plan, yes. I changed it. The humans are too dangerous to leave unchecked, it is better to eliminate them now. Besides, Malathin needs some human specimens to compare with the Gamilons."

Dieldrin bowed, "Of course, High Lord. My fleet is already in position; we only await your word."

Sodoman sat down in his command chair and smiled. Just as he had predicted, everything was going his way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 4**

Captain Hawk of the Gamilon Space Fleet was, he thought, loyal, ruthless, efficient, and destined for much greater things than guarding a small planet like Uther. He longed for the days of old, when the proud Gamilon Empire was rapidly expanding in all directions, when any world or nation that did not swear loyalty to Deslock and Gamilon, were conquered or destroyed.

That was the way life should be, and was before the rebellion. He didn't understand why Deslock didn't simply squash the rebellion and move on to better things. Instead, Deslock stopped his outward advances and started doting on the peons who tried to overthrow him. Deslock's new advisor, Pleb was the largest eyesore that resulted from Deslock's new order. Some punk off the streets who doesn't respect anything, and Deslock hangs on his every word.

Hawk shook himself, he had to focus on the positive. Gamilon still had one of the largest military forces anywhere, and although Deslock did not actually conquer the entire universe, he did succeed in establishing a universal peace, which is what he wanted to accomplish during his last crusade.

Even more important than that, the beautiful Jarria was waiting on New Gamilon for him to return. As much as Hawk loved his ship and the feeling of command, he did long to return home to be with her once more.

Wait a moment... something was wrong.

On his view screen, space seemed to be... splashing was the best word he could think of to describe it. It was more like space in that area was a pool of water that was being rained on.

"Incoming torpedo planes!" shouted his first officer.

"Where did they come from?" he demanded.

"I don't know. They just appeared out of nowhere."

"Battle stations! Launch fighters, then bring the fleet around."

Antiaircraft guns mounted on the Gamilon ships went into action, destroying any planes that got in too close. Most of the torpedo planes fired their torpedoes long before they got within range of the guns.

Explosions were everywhere as each ship, including Hawk's own command ship took hits from torpedo's.

It seemed like an eternity, but finally the first of the Gamilon squadrons were able to launch. The battle was joined in earnest.

"Battleships!" the first officer cried.

His ship rocked from the first volley of fire from the fleet of battleships that had instantly appeared.

"For the glory of Gamilon! Return fire!" It was the only order Hawk could think of. He didn't have any special weapons, and was out of formation to use the mines. He could retreat to the planet and make his stand there, while using the mines to make a barrier, but since his fighters were not holding their own, that too seemed like a loosing proposition. He could charge the enemy armada, but that would simply be a faster death. He needed an advantage, but knew he would not find one here.

Every fiber of his being told him to fight on, that death was better than the dishonor of letting the enemy have this world. Was better than the dishonor of going before Deslock and telling him that he had failed in his duty.

It was the practical, reasoning portion of his mind that won out, for there was only one other option. They had to retreat. There could be no glory in death, if that death did not accomplish anything. Perhaps if they reformed, and then came back, they would have a better chance against this enemy. He would have to hurry. On the bridge screens, over half of his ships had already been destroyed.

His own ship was hit by a shock cannon blast from one of the approaching battleships. Fire erupted on the bridge, as sparks and shrapnel flew.

Hawk winced in pain, his hand reaching up to hold his side where a piece of shrapnel had struck him.

"Order all ships to retreat... and contact Command."

Uneasily he sat back in his command chair. He had to spend as much effort fighting the pain of his wound as he did fighting the urge to stay and fight to the last.

Many of his ships had trouble breaking away from the combat zone. Some were destroyed in their attempts to escape. The fighters had an easier time of it. Most of the surviving fighters would be able to rendezvous with the fleet.

His heart sunk even further after the last of his surviving ships had escaped, for once the last of his ships had left the area, his scanners showed the enemy armada was already beginning orbital bombardment of the colony.

"Sir," the first officer approached. "We have gotten through to General Peck."

"Put him on the large screen," he said.

Immediately the first officer rushed away. General Peck, the General in charge of defense, appeared on the large screen near the front of the bridge. "Captain, what is your situation?"

"General Peck. Our position, guarding planet Uther has been overrun, forcing our few surviving ships to retreat. Please inform Leader Deslock that the order to fall back was issued on my own authority.

"They appeared from nowhere, sir. Even before our losses, they greatly outnumbered us.

"As soon as we regroup, I plan to reverse course again, and attempt to retake Uther with my remaining ships."

The Generals face was grave as he shook his head. "No, Captain. Your request is denied."

"But the people on Uther..."

"Nothing can be done about that. We are officially at war. I will report this to Deslock, and ask him for reinforcements. Uther will be avenged."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 5**

The Andromeda II was the pride of the Space Defense fleet. Her design was more rounded than the angular design of the original, and included four shock cannon turrets, and two Wave Motion guns that gave her more firepower better than any other ship in the fleet. She was also painted differently than her namesake, in that she was painted white, with a red underbelly like the rest of the fleet's ships, while the original Andromeda had been painted grey with off white accents.

Under the guidance of Kitano, her captain, the Andromeda II glided gently into the center position of the defensive wall of ships that guarded Earth.

"Captain," Commander Mizutani spoke from the Andromeda's video panel, "We don't often get advance warning like this, so be sure that you are ready."

"Yes sir. I do wish we had a better idea what to expect. I also don't feel comfortable with the Gamilon ship having taken position behind us. I know they won't help defend the Earth, but I think they are too ready to turn against us."

"Do the best you can, Captain. As long as we only target weapons and engines, the Gamilons will not interfere. They may even help. Either way, best of luck to you, Captain."

Kitano gave the Commander a sharp nod, and then broke the connection. "Dash, is everyone ready?"

Dash, formerly the gunnery officer on the Yamato, was now Combat Chief on the Andromeda. "All stations report ready. Nothing is showing on radar."

Kitano didn't respond. Something was going to happen. Soon. He just had to watch for it.

At the chime, Sandor looked up from his paperwork. A new message from headquarters displayed itself on the computer screen.

It read, "Be ready."

"Incoming missiles!" Dash shouted.

"From where?" Kitano demanded.

"From directly ahead, it just appeared out of nowhere."

Kitano watched the missiles trail carefully as it was tracked on one of the overhead screens. They curved gracefully through space, arching harmlessly over the Andromeda. Each one impacted in rapid succession with the Gamilon battleship.

The Gamilon ship seemed to groan in space from the impacts, but in the end, could not withstand them. The lower hull of the ship exploded in a ball of flame.

"Those missiles came from somewhere, fire ahead of us randomly until we hit something." Kitano ordered.

The fleet obeyed. Shock cannon blasts and missile trails filled the sky.

"Radar reports enemy shuttles behind us, descending towards Earth."

"Launch our fighters to stop those shuttles!"

"Enemy fighters coming in from above."

"Our guns will take care of the Enemy fighters, have our fighters concentrate on the shuttles."

Anti-aircraft guns on the Andromeda and the rest of the ships opened fire. Fighter after fighter exploded, but the enemy fighters did not stop. Just as the Earth planes were told to ignore the fighters, the enemy fighters were ignoring the larger ships, dancing around their antiaircraft fire, and focused their attack on defending their drop shuttles.

Earth's fighters had to abandon their pursuit of the shuttles to defend themselves, as the shuttles touched down on Earth unhindered.

The Andromeda waited helplessly in space, unable to attack either the enemy shuttles or planes for fear of hitting her own fighters.

If asked, Wendy would tell anyone that her favorite thing in the world is her flower garden. Not only did she like flowers in general, but they also had a special meaning to her since she met her husband over a Wild Calomel flower. Even after their first meeting, flowers had represented their love as they sent secret messages to each other by showing their flowers during communications between Earth and Yamato. So she tended her garden of flowers with special care.

Aside from the part time job she had several years back as aide to Commander Singleton, Wendy never cared much for military matters. Even then, the only reason she took the job was that the Commander had been her grandfather. She didn't notice the flash in the sky, and would not have thought anything of it if she had. Nor did she notice the jet trails of the assault shuttles as they entered the atmosphere.

Today, she was content with weeding her garden, secure in the knowledge that her husband was safe working at Earth Defense Headquarters, and would return to her as soon as whatever emergency had called him away was resolved.

She did notice the strange soldiers in gold armor. She watched in silent horror as a group of them gathered at the end of the street, before they fanned out, going to each house on the street in turn.

One of them noticed her.

She turned to run.

In the Earth Defense Headquarters, Homer barely noticed the unusually hectic level of activity. His mind was focused entirely on his job.

With a practiced ease, he sorted incoming and outgoing communications, patching the Commander instantly through to whoever he needed to speak with. On standby screens he maintained connections with Kitano on the Andromeda, Sandor on the Yamato Sea, the Earth based Marines, a variety of fighter squadrons. Yet he also busily worked the radio trying to find the frequencies that the enemy was using to coordinate their attacks.

When he could spare a glance, he would catch a glimpse of the main panel as it displayed the progress of the enemies' invasion.

At the Star Force Academy, the campus went into lockdown mode as soon as an alert was sounded. Cadets waited patiently in their rooms, or clustered around windows to try to figure out what was going on, while listening to Defense Force broadcasts.

Kei remained in her room, trimming one of her many bonsai trees. She knew there was nothing she could do to help, so she tried to occupy her mind as best she could. It really didn't help.

Across campus, Yumi was hyper from the excitement and rushed to join her friends gathered at the cafeteria windows. They talked of all the brave deeds that would be done that night to fight off the invasion. They talked of what they would do if faced with such a threat, and of how some of their fellow classmates may react under the same situations.

In another dorm, Adam Row paced his room to keep from getting too worked up. He tried his best to remain calm, since he believed that nothing good could come from rash action. Deep in his soul, he wanted to rush out and engage the enemy first hand, if the attack had come only a day later, he would be a formal member of the Star Force and would have been able to do something about it, but now... He tried to calm himself. In the end he wound up simply sitting down and fuming.

It was not the first time that Derek Wildstar had felt completely helpless, it was a feeling he could never get use to. This situation was painfully similar to the invasion by the Black Nebula, when he had been forced to watch the destruction of the Earth Defense fleet from the cockpit of his patrol ship, and later was forced to watch second and third wave of invaders, helpless to do anything but run for his life.

Now, too, he was unable to do anything to stop the assault on Earth. His patrol ship was not maneuverable enough to engage any of the enemies' fighters. They evaded him easily whenever he tried, and completely ignored his ship when he did not. They were taunting him, staying just out of reach.

It made him angry. It was a deep anger, but one he was strangely comfortable with. Like an anger he had known before. Before he had viewed his anger as a friend, but it had ruled him, as much as he had used it. He no longer allowed his anger to rule his actions, but that did not lessen the frustration he felt.

Nova glanced up at the flash of light that briefly lit the sky. A battle, she knew. Is Derek up there? she wondered. She hoped he was still at headquarters, but she knew that Derek wouldn't be happy unless he was up in the thick of the fighting.

She had other things to worry about, as she was jostled from her worries by passers by on the busy city street. She carried a bag of groceries in each hand, so she had to turn around to make sure her two children, Mark and Miyuki, were still close behind, each carrying a small bag of their own.

With a battle going on, she didn't want to be on the streets with them. Anything could happen.

For a split second her mind went back to the invasion by the Black Nebula. Alphon's paratroopers glided through the city at night, attacking civilians indiscriminatingly. Firing into passing trains, and apartment buildings. The civilian death toll had been high.

All the more reason for her to get the children home quickly. She didn't want Derek to have to worry, after all.

She hurried from block to block. Mark and Miyuki, picking up on their mother's worry and sense of urgency, quit their playful bickering, and tried to follow their mother even more closely.

She saw a strange aircraft fly overhead... she tried to think calmly what to do next, but she did not seem to realize that she was not calm.

There was an explosion, and the unmistakable sound of weapon's fire. The crowd on the street began to panic.

Some part of her said to take the children and hide in the nearest building, but she was too panicked herself to listen to it.

Dropping her bags, she grabbed each of her children by the hand and began running with them down the street.

Rounding a corner, a leveled weapon made her stop.

Chaos continued to grip the Earth Defense Headquarters, with messengers running from one post to the next, relaying the most updated information and orders. Despite its appearance, it was a very efficient form of chaos.

Homer compiled the latest set of communications into a basic summary for his commander. Commander Mizutani would only need the most pressing and important information, which Homer's practiced eye easily picked out. A pattern began to reveal itself to him… or rather the lack of a pattern struck him as odd, if not alarming.

He rushed over to the commander, offering him his compiled report. "It doesn't make sense, Commander; they're not making any moves to attack any of our fortified or strategic locations. They are staying out in the city's outskirts."

In a rush, the Commander snatched the sheets from Homer's hand, and looked over them himself, taking just a second longer, then studied again the tactical map displayed on the main panel. "You're right. Wait a second... What was it the Gamilon said about the attack...?"

The Commander paced another two steps. Of course, he thought, its not an invasion, its a round up! "Order all troops to leave their fortifications, and to engage enemy troops wherever they encounter them. Try to keep civilian casualties to a minimum."

Homer nodded, then disappeared into the bustle of the command center, doing his best to see that the orders were carried out as quickly as possible.

Knox was every bit the space marine his brother had been, and was very proud of that. His pride showed in every sound and in every movement he made. When the order came through for them to move out, he gleefully jumped at the chance to prove himself.

Grabbing his helmet and rifle, he hollered at his troops, "Come on, guys, Lets go get 'em!"

He then set out at full speed, full of confidence that his men would be right after him. His confidence and enthusiasm overflowing into them, his men followed instantly.

Yelling non-stop, Knox led his men at a break neck speed. Dodging people, they ran through the city to the nearest recorded landing site.

The gold armor made the enemy easy to spot. Although the wolf like shape to the heads of the enemy troops made Knox uneasy, it did not stop him from taking the first shot.

The shot went wild, but succeeded in getting the attention of the Death Wolves.

Although their return shots were more accurate than Knox's had been, they maintained a steady stream of fire back at the marines.

Knox swore at himself for missing, then took cover behind a trash can as laser shots fired all around him. Without aiming, he fired a few shots over the trashcan, back at them. Then, before he knew it, all was quiet.

The enemy had retreated.

Slowly, Knox and the other marines stood up enough to look around.

The civilians had all run away, and there was no sign of the gold clad soldiers either. The street was empty except for a few stray bodies of people who had not been as lucky as Knox.

Shaking himself, Knox did not allow himself to be discouraged. They weren't at the landing site yet, so he grabbed his gun, and his troops set off again.

Tired of pacing, Jordy Venture went back to the communications panel and activated it. "What's going on? First you don't want me here at all, and now you don't let me leave! Will you at least let me out of this room?"

This time, at least, someone answered. "I am sorry, Cadet Venture. Earth is under attack and all flights have been cancelled."

"Attack? I have to get back then!"

"Negative, cadet. Just be patient. Chances are you will be able to do more good up here than on Earth anyway, so why send you back, just to recall you tomorrow. Just wait, I'm expecting a few more people, and then I'll bring you all down at once."

Jordy knew that further questioning would do no good. Instead he sat back down on the floor of the small room, and tried to figure out just what the voice could be talking about.

Kitano's jaw dropped as he stood from the command chair on the Andromeda II. Overhead screen number four happened to be covering the section of space directly below and behind the fleet. He just saw the appearance of the largest battle station he had ever seen. Easily twice the size of the Gorba stations the Black Nebula had used, and it had not simply flown up. It had simply appeared. One moment the screen had been empty, the next the screen was filled with the huge form of the battle station.

"Someone tell me, where did THAT come from? And scan it! I need to know where its engines and weapons are!"

The battle station was huge, and cone shaped, like an upside down top. It had a central spire coming up from the top, and spaced out along the curved exterior were a series of domed platforms. Some of the domes were transparent, revealing cities within them, but most of them were opaque. At the base was a box shaped structure, which seemed to house the shuttle bays, and possibly housed an impressive weapons system.

"Sir, the assault shuttles have launched from Earth, and are rendezvousing with the enemy battle station."

"Dash, find a way to stop that thing."

Dash focused on his targeting equipment, using their sites to try and find something that resembled an engine or weapon. The box at the bottom of the station was the most inviting target, but was on the opposite side and impossible to hit. He tried to find something, anything that he could shoot to damage that thing.

It was taking too long. Nothing looked like a thruster. At this rate, all the shuttles would be on board any second.

Finally, he found something. He wasn't sure what it was, but he felt fairly sure it was part of their navigation systems.

The rear shock cannons rotated, tilted down towards the target and fired.

The explosion was magnificently impressive, but nothing more.

The last of the shuttles landed, and as soon as it had, the battle station moved with incredible speed. In a matter of seconds, it was out from under the Andromeda's fleet, and a second it disappeared into a space warp.

"Calculate that ship's warp destination!" Kitano commanded. His normal calm was wearing thin, but he would take the time necessary to get the job done right. As soon as the navigator made the calculations, Kitano would order the fleet to pursue.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 6**

From the bridge of his deep space patrol ship, Derek Wildstar watched as the rest of the Earth fleet lined up into formation and warped after the enemy. All that remained behind were debris from fighter craft that had been launched by both sides, and the wreckage of the Gamilon battleship. He knew the techies on Earth would have fun analyzing the enemy wreckage.

Medical ships would be arriving soon to save what pilots they could, but a practiced eye told Wildstar that the Gamilon ship would not survive long enough for the rescue teams to reach it. He would have to do what he could himself.

"Ready a shuttle for launch," he said, as he was half way to the door.

His pilot landed the shuttle skillfully on the top hull of the Gamilon ship, on a section he hoped would be more stable than the rest. As soon as he touched down, the rear hatch opened, allowing Wildstar and his rescue team to pour out.

They worked swiftly and silently, quickly locating an airlock hatch, opening it, and entering the ship. Once inside, they moved quickly through the ship, one man branching off at each new corridor they passed.

Wildstar made his way to the bridge of the Gamilon ship. He had only been on one or two Gamilon ships in the past, so it wasn't very difficult for him to find, but the going was slow, having to step over fallen supports and blown out panels. The ship had definitely taken major damage. His progress was further slowed by the frequent shaking of the deck, rattled by smaller explosions deep in the belly of the ship. None of the fallen crewmembers that he passed still lived.

At last, he reached the bridge, and went from station to station, checking for survivors. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was death, each one saddening him just a little bit more. Taking another look around, he found the Gamilon captain, sprawled in a relatively undamaged area of the bridge.

A larger explosion echoed from the bowels of the ship.

Rushing over to the fallen Captain, he checked his pulse. At least Captain Noble still lived. Lifting him as best he could, Wildstar began making his way back to the shuttle.

Wildstar heard the Gamilon captain muttering to himself as they moved down the corridors to the shuttle. He had to listen carefully to make it out, but he was saying something to the effect of "Home fleet... What happened to the Home Fleet?"

The rescue team met back at the shuttle, which lifted back off as soon as all were aboard. Wildstar sighed at the pitifully few number of survivors from the Gamilon ship.

"Message coming in from the ship, sir," the pilot reported.

"Well, what is it?" Wildstar asked.

"Headquarters radioed in. You are being summoned to the Yamato Sea."

At last.

It was the first time that Wildstar had returned to the Yamato Sea since his friends had been laid to rest, but it still looked the same. It was still just a huge chunk of ice floating between Earth and the reformed Moon. But there were a few changes, such as the addition of a prefab hanger next to a central bunker. There were also a series of small buildings along one edge that didn't seem to be able to serve any identifiable purpose.

Communications traffic indicated that several other shuttles were also scheduled to drop passengers off at the bunker as well, so as soon as he got off, Wildstar sent his shuttle back to the ship. He stood in the hanger while he waited for the next shuttle to land, trying to keep his feelings in check. He didn't want to hope too much, yet his gut told him this was the Icarus scenario, all over again.

His thoughts about Icarus seemed to be confirmed as Dr. Sane, Eager and Nurse Acre climbed off the second shuttle. Wildstar greeted them with a smile almost as wide as the Doctors.

"How are you doing, Doctor Sane?" he asked, then looking over at Eager, added, "It's almost like old times."

"Ahh, yes. Exactly like old times," the Doctor agreed. "And I hear the next few shuttles coming up from Earth are bringing in the latest batch of cadets directly from the Academy! Of course, you realize, Sandor will be very disappointed if you don't act a little surprised."

Within his chest, Wildstar felt his heart swell with pride, and anticipation. "Don't worry, Doc. Shall we enter the bunker?"

"Yes, of course!" The Doctor walked on past, pressing button to open the door. "I hope they have some Sake waiting in there for me."

The door opened to reveal a small waiting room that was totally devoid of refreshments of any kind, or any decorations whatsoever. A bench lined the walls and sitting on it was a single, extremely bored man in a cadet's uniform.

As soon as the door opened, the cadet stood. Looking past Dr. Sane and not even noticing the others, he fixed Derek Wildstar with a look of total hatred.

Wildstar recognized the stare for what it was, just as he identified the cadet as Jordy Venture, the brother of his late best friend. It did confuse him since he did not want to understand origins of Jordy's feelings.

Doctor Sane, feeling uncomfortable with the staring contest, did his best to break the tension. "Why, Jordy Venture! We've missed seeing you at the reunions, you would have been more than welcome. What brings you here?"

"Had business here. Now they won't let me go."

The Doctor couldn't help but notice the bitterness in the youth's voice. The entire situation seemed like he had somehow seen it before. Wildstar took over the conversation. "Since they kept you here, it must mean you are assigned with us."

Wildstar went over to the door control panel, and studied it more closely. "I wish Sandor didn't always make this so difficult."

"Surprising you is one of the few joys left in his life, Derek," Doctor Sane said.

Wildstar smiled in spite of himself, then punched in his command code. "I know, Doctor Sane. It just doesn't seem fair, he makes us work for it, but I bet the Cadets will have guided tours."

The room shuttered, causing Jordy Venture and Nurse Acre to nearly fall. "Are we moving?" she asked.

"Of course," answered the doctor.

The room descended for several minutes, then stopped, and began moving again in a different direction. At last the room stopped and the doors opened.

Keeping his reactions hidden from Venture, Wildstar swallowed and held his breath before stepping out.

He stepped out into a poorly lit, but good-sized ice cavern. Light emanated from the far end of the cavern, inviting the new arrivals to walk towards it. As they neared it, the surface they were walking on changed from ice to metal.

Wildstar stopped, and forced himself to breathe again. The air was cold and harsh, but he felt the warmth up ahead. He knew, without a doubt, he was standing at the entrance of the third bridge. Beside him, Dr. Sane wore a smile as big as the one on his own heart. Nurse Acre seemed a bit more unsettled... she wasn't one of Yamato's most veteran crewmen, and was taken more off guard, while young Jordy Venture was walking around with a look of total confusion, and a bit of shock, as the ice cave he was walking down became a lit metal room.

Looking over to the right, the elevator was exactly where Wildstar expected it to be. He waited impatiently for the others to reach the elevator, before pushing the button for the first bridge.

Much of Jordy's resentment seemed to have been lost of forgotten as they rode up in the elevator. Wildstar assumed it was forgotten in place of wonderment... or at least confusion, although Wildstar didn't spare much time in thinking about it. He was too excited.

The door opened onto a dream come true. Wildstar stepped out onto the bridge. He was home again.

The main video panel still dominated the bridge and was mounted at its usual angle just above the front windows. The radar station was still in the center on the right, he always use to look there to find encouragement from Nova. The engineering station just left of the Radar station also looked same. Sandor's science station along the right side of the bridge, with the back up radar stations, and on the left wall was Homer's communication equipment, and the gunnery stations where he would always see Dash, and along the front of the bridge, in front of the windows, were the four combat and navigation stations. The station he had spent so much of his life at... next to it the one where Mark Venture always sat. The return suddenly seemed bittersweet. Of course, at the back wall, was the Captains station... complete with miniature copies of all the other bridge stations, and a chair that was tied to a lift to take it either all the way up to the Captain's quarters, or down to the second or third bridge. One thing was missing. The carved portrait of Captain Avatar that had been mounted behind the captain's chair was absent.

Wildstar made a mental note to ask Sandor about that.

"Welcome home," Sandor said, "Now that you are here, Yamato can come alive again." He had just entered from the doorway on the opposite side of the Captain's station, leading a small procession of familiar officers, including Orion, Sakagage and IQ-9.

Sandor continued, "Sakagage has been assigned to Dash's old post... It seems Kitano was unwilling to part with him. Orion has finally become our Chief Engineer, and Eager will take the main radar station. Young Cadet Venture will be our new Navigator-Pilot... While you, Wildstar will command."

"And the other posts?"

"I will assume my old duties as science officer, while the other posts, including Combat Chief, will be filled mostly by cadets on the next two shuttles."

The orders to pack everything up had come as a complete surprise. Even more so, when he had been told that his room mate would not be returning, and to pack his stuff up as well. He had one hour to pack one duffle bag for each of them and then meet the shuttle in front of the dorms. A task that Adam Row completed with an excited ease, taking care to carefully pack the picture Jordy was so fond of.

Two shuttles were waiting for them in front of the dorms, along with a group of Space Marines who were already busy boarding them. A small group of cadets were already there, but he could see a lot more cadets were still on their way. He recognized most of them, but it was impossible to know everybody on such a large campus. Most of the cadets that he did recognize were top in their fields of study; he could only assume the same was true for the rest of them as well. He, himself, had scored very high marks in gunnery and tactics, but he hadn't scored anywhere near the levels of most of the others. Row just hoped he wasn't there by mistake.

The area around the shuttles was quickly becoming a crowd as more and more cadets came with their packs, and friends rushed up to see them off. Row stopped trying to figure out what was going on, and instead turned his attention towards getting a good seat on the shuttle.

Then he saw her... even though she was also a cadet, he had never seen her before; a face a beautiful as that he would have remembered. Only thing to do was go up and find out who she was.

His progress to the shuttle was abruptly halted by a large officer wearing a green on white uniform holding a clipboard. "Name?" he asked.

Row's mind seemed to have deserted him, as he looked up at the officer in confusion.

"What is your name, Cadet?"

"Row, Adam, sir."

The officer ruffled through the papers on his clipboard, finally finding the right one and handing it to Row.

It was an assignment card. Row read it, not quite believing it was real. He read it again.

Assignment:YAMATO

Station: TO BE ASSIGNED

REPORT TO FIRST BRIDGE

The flight had been uneventful. Actually, it had been downright boring, crammed in an over filled shuttle with no windows. And quiet... the noisiness of the ground had disappeared as everyone lost themselves in their own thoughts, and the enormity of their situation.

They weren't even sure where they had landed, they suspected, but couldn't bring themselves to actually believe that they had been taken to the Yamato Sea. Then the shuttle doors opened, revealing a tunnel carved out of ice.

The officer who had ushered them onto the shuttles appeared again, and gestured them out of the shuttles, before leading them down the tunnel.

Knox glanced down again at his new assignment card, still not quite believing he was in the right place. On the other hand, the cadets who were walking through the ice cave with him seemed even more confused. It was for their benefit that no sign of confusion reached his face.

He also was not sure about the extra long list of duties that would now be expected of him and his men. Having to act as damage repair, laundry duty, some other duties that equaled janitor; some job for a Marine. His second in command, Todd, was also cross-listed, but he was listed as a cook's assistant. What were they thinking, he thought, we're marines, not butlers. But then, noticing that several of the cadets walking with them were women, made him think that some of the perks may compensate for the extra duties.

At least he wouldn't be the only one lost, wandering around a strange ship, trying to figure out where his bunk assignment was. He just hoped, that with the confidence he projected, he didn't wind up being the last one to find their bunk.

Jordy Venture was frozen in his tracks, standing like an idiot mid stride in the middle of the bridge. It was the chair. HIS chair; his brother's chair. How could he be expected to sit in Mark's chair.

He blinked. For a second, he thought he saw Mark sitting there, looking back at him. Smiling in that encouraging brother sort of way that Mark often did, but once he blinked, the chair was waiting for him, just as empty as before.

"Is there a problem, Venture?" Wildstar asked, the slight hesitation around the name "Venture" barely noticeable.

If it had been anyone else who had asked him, he might have given voice to his worries, but instead it came from HIM.

"No, sir. No problems." He said, and forced himself to take those last steps to sit in the chair.

Sitting there, it was a strange sensation to know that was the exact same place where his brother had sat. It was even oddly reassuring when he began running the system checks, to know that he was following his brother's footsteps by checking the same systems that Mark did.

He looked over his shoulder at the sound of the elevator door opening. Wildstar and Sandor were looking over some personnel reports, while two new crew members stepped off the elevator. One of them, wearing a blue on white uniform, Jordy recognized as Lucas from the academy. The other one, wearing a black on yellow uniform, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen... he wished he knew what her name was.

The two new crew members came to attention in front of the Captain. "Cadets Lucas and Yumi reporting for duty."

"Do you already know your assignment?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take your stations, and run your checks. We are taking off as soon as we get clearance."

The cadets nodded. Lucas went over to one of the science stations, while Yumi went over to communications.

The elevator door opened again allowing a confused Adam Row to step out onto the bridge. He too came to attention before the Captain. "Cadet Adam Row, reporting for duty."

Wildstar looked up at the cadet wearing a red on white uniform. "Do you already know your assignment?"

"No, Sir."

The Captain looked over to Sandor who answered the unspoken question, "I mentioned him to you earlier, and I didn't want to get his hopes up if you didn't agree with my selection."

Wildstar nodded, wishing that the same consideration had been given over Jordy Venture, but he would still have supported the decision. As for Row, his academy record was not spectacular, but there seemed to be something familiar about it all the same. He faced Row, examining him closely, trying to look into his soul. "You will be our new Combat Chief. Assume the front combat station."

Row turned to the front of the bridge, more than a little shocked. There was his room mate, Jordy sitting at the helm, staring back at him with a big grin to congratulate him... or perhaps just glad to see him. He couldn't help smiling back.

He took a deep breath, and pushed all doubt out of his mind. Sitting down at his post, he buried himself into his system checks, letting his duty and training take over, pushing his self doubt out of his mind, at least for the moment.

Wildstar looked over his crew, feeling a sense of satisfaction. Knowing they were all good people, who knew their jobs, and would do their best. He wondered if this was what Avatar had felt the first time the Star Force had been assembled for the trip to Iscandar. Still, he would prefer to run them through a few weeks worth of training exercises to whip them into shape, but he knew there would be no time for that this time.

His status board showed all stations were ready, so they might as well begin. "Eager, are all shuttles away?"

"The last shuttle blasted off a few minutes ago."

"Good. Homer, contact earth."

At the communications console, a confused Yumi looked back at him.

Wildstar winced... old habit, he supposed. This would be the first trip without Homer at his old post. "I'm sorry... What was your name?"

The young woman, jumped up to attention once more, "Yumi, Sir."

"You don't need to call me sir. We are all family here. Contact Earth please, Yumi."

Yumi sat back down at her post, and a few seconds later, the Commander's face appeared on the video panel.

"This is Captain Wildstar of the Yamato. We are ready for lift off."

The Commander nodded. "Good. Launch immediately, and then wait for further instructions. With our main fleet in pursuit of the enemy, we will need Yamato here to guard Earth if they come back."

"With all due respect, Commander, there is another danger I feel Yamato should look into. When I rescued the Gamilon, he mentioned their home fleet. We need to find out what happened to their fleet, to make sure the same fate does not befall our own."

The commander was silent. His stern eyes searched Wildstar and Sandor for the answers to his unspoken questions. Wildstar knew he was weighing his options. He knew the Commander had great respect for the instincts of veteran officers like himself and the late Captain Avatar.

"Very well. Do you want the Gamilon survivors transferred to Yamato?"

"Yes sir, they could be of great help to us."

The commander nodded. "Your old patrol ship, with the rescued Gamilons, will rendezvous with you on your way out of the solar system. Good luck, Captain Wildstar."

The screen went blank.

On the surface, a series of demolition charges shattered the ice. They were carefully laid out, and timed, so that none of the ice chunks would fall towards earth, but instead the many pieces of ice began to spread out into a ring around the planet. All except for one midsized piece of ice. The piece that held Yamato within.

The Yamato's engines flared, instantly burning through the back portion of the smaller ice asteroid, propelling it towards the sun.

As the ice neared the sun, the heat from the sun began melting the ice, forming a comet tail behind it. Soon the entire chunk of ice was obscured by the haze.

The comet whipped around the sun, heading back towards Earth. Something started becoming visible at the front of the comet. The bow of what appeared to be a World War Two era battleship... only the bow had a hole in the front of it, the firing gate of the Wave Motion Gun. More of the ice tore away, revealing the blue and red sides of the ship, the three torpedo tube doors closed. The first of the front gun turrets became visible in the haze, then the second turret, and then the smaller third turret. The Observation decks on the sides of the ship cleared the frosty haze, revealing eager young cadets watching from within. The windows of the second bridge cleared, quickly followed by those of the first bridge, and then the Captain's room on the uppermost point of the ship. At the same time the third bridge on the bottom of the ship exited the haze. Row after row of the anti-aircraft guns that lined the sides of the top of the ship cleared, then the smoke stack. The two rear gun turrets cleared, and finally the three stabilizer fins mounted on the main engine.

Finally cleared of the ice, the Yamato's main engine flared to life, propelling Yamato on into the vastness of space.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 7**

Homer slammed the phone down out of frustration. He would have at least felt better if the phone had been busy, but there had simply been no answer.

First he had tried to get hold of Nova to let her know that Derek had been given a mission, but there had been no answer. Then, slightly worried, he had tried his own home, since he knew his wife should have been home. Again, no answer.

No reason to worry, he told himself, maybe Wendy and Nova had met for lunch or gone shopping. He tried his best not to think of the possibility that they had been taken.

It was a big city, after all. There were lots of places they could be. The police estimated that it would be over a day before they completed their door to door inspection to figure out who had been taken by the invaders. That is why Homer had to find them. He had to know now. She had to be all right.

There was no other possibility.

He placed another call, but the phone still rang with no answer. With each ring, his agitation grew.

"Commander," he shouted across the room, "I'm sorry. I have to go. There is no answer at Wildstar's or my place."

Without waiting for an answer or approval, Homer grabbed his uniform jacket and rushed out the door.

Wildstar's place was on the way, so Homer slowed his aircar enough to give the house a good look. There was no sign of any internal lights being on, and the door was still closed tight. His mind was running too quickly to think about getting out and physically checking the door, he had to get home.

With a screeching whine, Homer stopped the aircar in the street in front of his house. Already he could tell something was dreadfully wrong.

He jumped out of the car and rushed to the house.

Part of the white picket fence that lined the front of their yard had been knocked down. Parts of the front flowerbed had been trampled. His front door was crooked, hanging open, held up by a single hinge.

In a panicked blur, Homer ran through each room of his house, giving each room the quickest glance making sure each was empty. All the while, shouting out Wendy's name.

The house was empty. He was alone. She had been taken from him, and there was nothing he could do.

That couldn't be right. He had to do something. He would get her back, and nothing, no one, no force, no empire could stop him. He would bring Wendy home again.

Commander Mizutani had studied the crew records of all the Star Force personnel, especially those who, like Homer, had been the Yamato's original crew. Actually, reading those reports was more of an art form, since one had to read between the lines to understand the full story.

Homer, for example, had always been a good kid, but excitable, and prone to over react. Some of the events in his record included his jumping ship in a space suit in an attempt to return home; only an extensive search had rescued him. On another occasion, Homer backed out of a mission and decided to stay on Earth in order to find some girl, but he later changed his mind. Homers record also gave several strong hints that Homer harbored a deep resentment towards Yamato's navigator.

Those insights into Homer's personality, combined with the experience of having worked with him for several years sent up a red flag shortly after Homer left to check on his home. When Homer failed to return in a timely fashion, a quick phone call to have someone swing by Homer's home confirmed that the worst had happened.

There wasn't much doubt in his mind what Homer would try to do. The Commander was half tempted to let Homer throw his career or life away. But Homer was a good man and it would be a waste of a good officer to let that happen. Homer just needed to be shown reason. Besides, he was going to need a man with just Homer's qualifications, which was why Homer hadn't been assigned to the restored Yamato.

Without wasting another moment, he grabbed two guards and rushed his way to the airfield.

The first row of planes were the fancy Cosmo Zeros used by the fighter aces, they were easily identified by their angular nose design that allowed for a wider field of fire, and extra fins that gave it added maneuverability. No sign of Homer with any of them.

That was followed by several rows of the basic Cosmo Fighters. The Cosmo Fighters were extremely streamlined and could be equipped for any mission. Their cockpits could hold up to two people, and they had a gun turret that could be manned on top that was nearly flush with the fuselage when not in use. In addition to its laser guns, they could also be equipped with missiles or torpedoes. They were easily one of the best fighters ever developed, which was why they had been the main fighter used by the Earth Defense Forces since just after the Gamilon War. Homer was nowhere around them either.

The Commander was about ready to give up by the time they came to the last row of fighters. These were the oldest fighters available, the ones the Commander thought had all been decommissioned, the old Black Tiger style of fighters. They were wide one man fighters that relied mainly on laser cannons. Their limited maneuverability had led to the rapid rise of the newer Cosmo line of fighters, but the older fighters would always be remembered for their gaudy black and yellow paint jobs, with the eyes painted on the nose. They may be old, but they certainly look mean, the Commander thought. That was where they found Homer.

Homer was sitting high in one of the cockpits, obviously having trouble running his pre-flight check list. The Commander was not as surprised at Homer's obvious difficulty as his two guards, since he knew that Homer did not know how to fly, but he couldn't help admiring the fact that Homer had no intention of letting that stop him.

The Commander stood and waited for Homer to notice him. What Homer noticed first, however, were the rifles being carried by the guards to either side of him... then Homer's focus widened to notice the guards themselves. Finally Homer swallowed and directed his attention to Commander Mizutani.

"You are late reporting back in, Homer," the Commander said.

Homer said nothing. He nervously shifted his eyes from the Commander, to the guards, and back down into the cockpit.

"They took Wendy." It was a statement, not a question since the Commander already knew the answer, but he voiced softly, with compassion.

Again, Homer did not respond in words, but the strength in Homers face faded away. He seemed to be quivering all over, barely containing his sorrow and worry.

"The Andromeda II is in pursuit. Captain Kitano will intercept and rescue our people. You would be completely useless, flying around alone in an outdated fighter."

The fire returned to Homer's eyes as he finally looked directly at his commander. "I have to do something!"

"You will. Your unique skills and experience make you the ideal candidate for tracking them with our Galactic Sensor Net. But, you can only do that from here. Not in that fighter, not even on Yamato."

For the first time, Mizutani saw the faintest hints of hope returning to Homer's face.

"Ok, Commander, I'll do it your way." Homer said, as he started climbing down from the fighter, but then turned his head to the sky. "Kitano, Wildstar... I'm counting on you."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 8**

Captain Noble awoke with a start, and found himself staring up at a strange ceiling. Worse, the ceiling's architecture indicated it was definitely not of Gamilon design. He must have been captured.

"Where am I? Why are you holding me?" he shouted. "You can't hold a Gamilon officer captive, and not expect to pay the consequences!"

A short, round, balding alien wearing a white outfit with a red cross rushed over to him, followed quickly by several other aliens wearing similar outfits. Noble realized, that these aliens who were holding him were Humans. It figured, he knew they were behind the attack.

"No, no, you don't understand!" the short human was saying, "You were hurt when you ship was destroyed, you are a guest on board the Yamato."

Lies, nothing but lies from the alien trash. "Yamato?! How do you expect me to believe that, when we all know that ship is little more than scrap at the center of a giant ice ball. I demand to speak to your Captain."

"All right, the Captain has already been informed. He will be here as soon as he can."

Noble gave the Doctor a scowl that seemed to say "He better not make me wait," but the Doctor's return scowl was fierce enough for Noble to reconsider waiting.

The corridors were just as Wildstar remembered them. The grove in the walls where the interlocking blast doors could close the section off; the directional arrows on the floor that were so often ignored during alerts; and the moving floors that spent most of their time inert, they were all just as he remembered them. Only the placement of the rooms seemed to have changed somewhat.

"The layout sure is different here, Sandor. Are you sure the sickbay is on this level?"

Sandor was walking beside his captain, and was also admiring the hallway... although he was more on the lookout for potential problems that simple nostalgia. "When the Yamato self-destructed, the internal explosion destroyed everything below the second bridge completely. Only the shattered outer hull remained. I tried to fix as many of the original design flaws as I could in the reconstruction, so there are quite a few changes."

Wildstar gave a vocal acknowledgement to the statement, but decided to reserve judgment on the changes until he saw if they actually were improvements or not.

It was too much to take in all at once, really. The attack on Earth, the rebirth of Yamato, and just down the hall, a very arrogant Gamilon was waiting to meet with him in sickbay. Wildstar was fairly certain what all the Gamilon was going to say, but he had no idea what to say back to him. It was potentially a very volatile situation.

The two marines stationed just outside sickbay, Wildstar was sure, would not make the situation any better, but at least they would prevent things from getting too out of hand. Oddly enough, Wildstar could swear one of the marines looked a lot like the late Sgt. Knox. He vaguely recalled something about that in one of the personnel reports, but made a note to recheck the records in case there were any other surprises in store for him.

Steeling himself, Wildstar took the step that would activate the doors.

Captain Noble stood before him with fire and anger in his eyes, full of pride, and doing his best to make the surgical gown he was wearing look like a proper uniform. "Return me to my ship."

"Your ship was destroyed by the same force that just attacked our fleet and Earth."

Noble was impassive, his pride not letting him express the anger and hatred boiling just below the surface. "Then you will return me to my people."

"I will. We have already set course for Gamilon."

"Very good then." Noble seemed slightly disappointed not to have to fight to win his way, maybe these Earth people were finally ready to become part of the Gamilon Empire.

"But know this, Captain. I am not going there because you want me to. I am going to Gamilon to try and learn what happened to your home fleet. You may come along because it would save time… and you may want to help out. You want to know what happened as much as we do."

"I will not help you. I remain loyal to my Nation."

Wildstar nodded, not expecting anything different. "I will see to it that you are given quarters, but try to stay out of our way."

Without waiting for a response, Wildstar rejoined Sandor in the corridor.

Wildstar waited until the door closed tightly before turning to Knox. "See to it that the Gamilon gets some comfortable quarters. Make sure they have a lock we can use to keep him inside in need be."

The large marine nodded, and Wildstar moved on with Sandor to continue his ship inspection.

Kei found activity reassuring, it finally allowed her to expel some of the pent up energy left over from the attack. She had unpacked her bags in her room, which she was sharing with some girl named Yumi. She hadn't seen her yet. Yumi most likely first got to see their room a few minutes after Kei's own duty shift started.

For some reason Kei felt more at home here in the hydroponics garden. She would be responsible for its upkeep, producing as much food as possible for the galley, to say nothing making sure hydroponics was properly interfaced with Life Support for CO2 recycling. On top of that, she also had to do the Laundry and look after the water recycling. A busy schedule, but she was looking forward to it. Well, maybe she wasn't looking forward to all the laundry.

One thing she was looking forward to was the chance to use one of the Holography Rooms. She wanted to play one of her memory tapes, or maybe one of the other programs. She wouldn't mind some target practice either for that matter.

Until then, she had to do what she could to make sure the tomatoes and other plants were ok.

Yumi couldn't believe it, her roommate had to be some total dork. The woman had arranged everything so that it looked perfect. No sign of spontaneity anywhere. She had folded her socks and underwear and placed them in neat rows, all color coordinated. Her shirts didn't were all plain, with no since of style at all. At least she had left the better closet and dresser open for her.

Yumi unceremoniously dumped her belongings into the free dresser, without bothering to sort or fold anything. There would be time for that later. Besides, as long as her uniforms looked nice, what did it matter what the rest of her clothes looked like. Besides, she had better things to do. She couldn't wait to check out the main communications room, where all the real equipment was.

Oh, great. She should have known. Her roommate had a bonsai tree sitting on her desk. How typical.

Dr. Sane was worried about Mimi. He really wasn't sure the little cat would be able to survive the trip. He probably should have left her behind on Earth, but he couldn't do that. He remembered how hard it was on him when Mii had died while he was away on his first voyage. He couldn't do that again. If Mimi died, at least he would be there with her to comfort her during her final days.

He would put such thoughts out of his head, he had to be strong if he was to do his part to hold the crew together. He couldn't be worrying about such things, when he had to be here to help the crew once they realized that their own loved ones would surely be among those taken by the alien forces. That would hit the crew hard, and when it did, he had better be in good spirits to keep them from getting too down about it.

And if that didn't work, he would double check the condition of his liquor cabinet to make sure it would be ready if worse came to worse.

"This looks like it," Wildstar said to himself as much as Sandor. It had been a long tour, and he still hadn't seen everything, but all he wanted now was to rest in his own quarters, and he had finally found them.

"Wait." Sandor tried to stop him, but Wildstar had already pushed the button, opening the door.

Inside, Jordy Venture and Adam Row were just as surprised to see their captain step inside their quarters unannounced.

Row jumped up and saluted, while Venture stiffened in an effort to bite down the hate he held for the man.

Wildstar covered his surprise well, and nodded to each of them, his eyes scanning the room, before finally fixing themselves upon an object on the desk.

Venture spoke first, "Is there anything we can help you with, Sir?" biting off each word.

Finally Wildstar was able to get out an "At ease."

Row visibly relaxed.

"I just stopped by to see how you were settling in. Is everything Ok, any problems?" He said the words to the two men in the room, but Wildstar's eyes were firmly fixed on the picture resting on the desk. It was a picture of his best friend, Mark Venture, with black ribbon wrapped around the corners of the frame. It had been along time since he had looked upon the face of his friend.

"Everything is fine, Sir. Yamato already seems like home." Venture bit off.

The bitterness in Ventures voice pulled Wildstar's gaze to him, away from the photograph. "Good. I'll see you on your next shift then."

As soon as he was safely back in the relative safety of the corridor, Wildstar turned to Sandor. "Ok, Sandor, what have you done with my quarters?"

Sandor had a hard time not laughing, and was unable to keep the grin from his face. "You are the Captain now, Wildstar. You sleep in the captain's quarters."

Wildstar did not like the sound of that. Those rooms had always been empty… except when used by the occasional visiting captain. But to Wildstar, they had always been Avatar's quarters. No one else's. He was not sure he wanted to take that step. But if he was to take that step, this was as good, or as bad a time as any to do it. He joined Sandor in an elevator, and let Sandor press the button.

"What about the carved portrait of Avatar? Why is it not hanging in the bridge?"

"Avatar was the guiding light of the Star Force, especially on our first journey, but most of our current crewmembers, weren't with us while Avatar commanded. He is no longer our guiding light, Wildstar, you are.

"You are who the crew looks to now, even us old veterans, and you have proven yourself worthy of our trust time and again. But don't worry, I realize that sometimes you will need a guiding light as well."

The elevator doors opened onto the captain's quarters. There was the anchor symbol molded into the door, the bookcase with assorted reference and inspirational books, the fold down bed, a mini control panel that had duplicates of the most important of the bridge readouts… and there, above the work desk, was the Avatar portrait.

"Actually, it was Dr. Sane's idea, but it seemed the best place for it."

Wildstar couldn't speak. There was a lump in his throat, and tears in his eyes. He was home. "Thank you, Sandor."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 9**

"There is something you must understand, Pleb," Deslock walked with long strides down the carpeted hallway from his throne room to the briefing room where his Generals were waiting.

Pleb did his best to keep up with his leader. His youthful idealism obvious, as he had made suggestion after suggestion to Deslock about making peace offers, or suggesting targets for swift retribution to bring the conflict to a close. They were all ideas that Deslock had to dismiss out of hand as impractical, or simply impossible. Pleb simply did not yet understand the realities of war or international politics.

"War does not allow us to be our better selves. You must be sure to remember that. Out of necessity I—we must become hard." Turning his head slightly, Deslock tried to watch Pleb's reaction, and was pleased that Pleb did his best to remain impassive. "No matter what happens in the meeting, do not question or contradict me. The time for me to be forgiving has past."

Pleb swallowed. "Any suggestions I make will be made in private, Leader Deslock."

Deslock nodded, his approval, and slowed his step just long enough for the door before him to have time to open. His cape dramatically fluttered on a draft as he entered the conference room.

The focal point of the room was a long table inset with video panels currently displaying the map of the Gamilon Empire. There was one seat for each General along the sides, and Deslock's larger chair at the head of the table, for each seat there was a goblet filled with a burgundy liquid. Deslock's goblet was the glass one with the spikes, which he preferred.

The Generals each stood by their chairs as they waited for Deslock to take his seat. They were Generals Auctor, Carcer, Hoven, Kapo, Koffin, and General Peck. Talon would assume his normal place by Deslock's side. Pleb would be expected to take a seat just behind Deslock, now was no time for a civilian advisor.

Maintaining a commanding, yet leisurely presence, Deslock assumed his seat, and then waited for his generals to do the same. "Well, Gentlemen. Where do we stand?"

General Auctor stood first. "We still have not heard from our Home Fleet, but I have filled General Peck's request for ships from my fleets to protect our home world." Pointing to several planets on the map table he continued, "Several of our outer colonies and protectorates have been attacked, their defending fleets wiped out. The enemy has been building fortifications on the planets they have taken from us, and instigated policies of total Genocide towards our people."

"These attacks are intolerable!" shouted a frustrated General Kapo, "We loose planet after planet, and we sit here doing nothing!" He turned to face Deslock directly, "If we were still the Great Empire we pretend to be we would be out there now expanding our Empire, the other nations would be too afraid of us to mount a strike like this! You have abandoned our manifest destiny, instead you cater to fools like that Pleb and the other bleeding hearted—"

Calmly and impassively, Deslock opened a panel in the arm of his chair. They were controls he had not used in a very long time, there had been no need to use them, but it was time for an example. He selected the button that represented General Kapo's chair, and with the slightest of pressures activated it.

In the middle of his sentence, Kapo was gone. He had dropped through a hole in the floor, out of sight and service just as quickly as he had fallen out of favor.

"Gentlemen," Deslock spoke softly. It was not necessary to shout to make his point, "I will not tolerate animals in the service of the Gamilon Empire. This is a time of emergency, we have been attacked, and our people kidnapped. I will not tolerate accusations or infighting that does not aid us in our goal of returning our people, and teaching this new enemy the folly of challenging the Gamilon Empire! Prey continue, General Auctor."

Auctor swallowed, "Yes Leader Deslock. I must report that most of the fleet guarding the planet Uther survived their attack… apparently by retreating. I suggest that punitive acts be taken against Captain Hawk for ordering the retreat."

General Peck stood, "I disagree, Hawk withdrew to reform his forces, he only retreated at my explicit order."

Deslock fixed Peck with a cold stare, then turned back to Auctor. "We will discuss that, and any punitive actions later. Do you have anything else, General Auctor?"

"Only that we have yet to hear back from Captain Noble or his ship. We may need to reconsider the possibility that the humans are behind the attacks."

"Very well." Deslock waited for Auctor to return to his seat, then turned his full attention to General Peck. "What is your report General Peck?"

"Deslock Mines have been deployed around our home world, and every colony that has them. We have also deployed Ecto-Gas to block some of the forbidden travel routes through our space. I have also ordered the Planet Killer Missiles taken out of mothballs in case they are needed. In addition our anti-ship batteries have been upgraded. Our defense ships have been given new orbit paths to give our anti-ship batteries a clearer range of fire." Peck hesitated, not quite willing to make his next point, and slightly afraid it would anger Deslock. "We may need to consider the hostages as expendable."

Deslock nodded, "Very well, General. You have made several good points. We will make every effort to rescue our people, but not at the expense of protecting the rest of the Empire.

"What we need, Gentlemen, is a more specific, and effective defense strategy."

General Carcer stood next. "Looking over the history of Gamilon, we have never done well in a defensive campaign. We should try and find away to fight this war offensively, or maybe find some way to defend ourselves offensively until we can attack the enemy directly."

"That is an excellent idea, General." Deslock said. "What did you have in mind?"

Carcer thought quickly. He had spoken with only the barest minimum of an idea, and now had to rush to find some way to implement it. "I think that Captain Hawk had the start of a good idea. We could combine the defensive fleets of worlds that are located near each other, and keep them moving. When one of the planets is attacked, the combined defense fleet can then counter attack the enemy fleet."

"That wont work for all of our protectorates," Auctor interjected.

"That may be true, General Auctor," Deslock said, "But it is the first good idea to come out of this meeting. Get to work, and make this plan workable."

There was always something unsettling about looking up and seeing the stars. It just didn't seem natural. The wide metal web that covered the capital city did help ease the effect a little, but it was still unnerving, which was odd, since he really didn't remember that much about his original home world.

What he did remember was living happily at home, when the volcanoes erupted… all of the volcanoes erupted. There was smoke, fire, and rubble. The rubble buried him and his entire family. He had survived, and been evacuated. Like thousands of others, he had spent the next several years in the state orphanage, not knowing who he once was. They had given him a new name, Gladn. It was not a Gamilon name, but a name that had come from the teachings of Queen Guardiana.

The old ones often talked about the original Gamilon, they talked about the planet's dual crust, so that instead of stars overhead, one could look up and see the reassuring upper crust the planet that kept out the harmful rays of the sun better than the metal artificial crust that covered the city now.

They also talked about how the Earth ship Yamato had laid waste to the planet, and caused the eruptions that had taken his family. Gladn hated humans.

Sometimes he would ask the old ones why the central palace did not have the same organic curves that the rest of the buildings in the city did. They would answer that it was designed to look like the palace on the now destroyed planet of Iscandar, but that answer was meaningless to the youth who would soon be old enough to join the military.

It was expected that he join the military that employed 90 of the population, but he wasn't sure that was what he wanted. He was sure that he did not want to join the Guardiana followers.

He was almost done with his state sponsored education, in a few more weeks he would have to make a decision, and it would be hard. After the attacks, the push was really on to join the military. Some of his friends had been taken, and he wanted to help, but still...

He would have to decide soon. If worse came to worse, he could take on work helping out at some of the local shops.

He continued to look up at the sky, hoping the answers to his life would be spelled out there. Wondering what destiny he could possibly have.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 10**

Jordy did his best to focus on his work, rechecking the navigation instruments and making minor course adjustments. There was certainly enough to keep him busy, but still, he kept finding himself looking over his shoulder to Yumi, at the communication's station.

Her long brown hair reaching just below her shoulders, her body filling out the body-suit she wore very nicely. And he hadn't managed to say two words to her.

"Give it up, Venture," Adam Row said. In contrast, Row had very little to do just then, although they both knew that would change if the ship saw any action. Row, too, cast a sideways glance at Yumi. "You can go ahead and consider her mine."

"You think so?" Venture glanced over at his friend. "I don't think you have a chance. That woman has an eye for class, you just don't qualify."

"Ha. Ha. You will pay for that remark. Remember, I know what music you like. Class, indeed."

"So, Row, when do we begin?"

Row thought for a few seconds. "We can't do anything during duty hours, so what say we begin at the next meal."

Eager broke the relative silence of the bridge, and the banter taking place at the front bridge stations. "Radar Reports large debris field up ahead."

Sandor raised his head from his own station to cast a glance at Row.

"Venture, slow to 1/4th combat speed," Row's first order didn't come out as easily as he would have liked. "Sandor, what have we got?"

With half a smile, Sandor turned back to his own screens, focusing the sensors, and analyzing their readouts. "I'm reading Gamilon alloys, Ship wreckage, as well as organic matter. I think this is what we came for."

Row stood and began walking towards the bridge elevator, "Ill inform the Captain."

Lucas, at the secondary science station looked over at Sandor. "Organic matter?"

Sandor nodded. "Bodies."

On the uppermost level of the ship, Row had the barest hesitation, before knocking on the door to the Captain's cabin. The Anchor molded onto the door giving it an almost antique look.

Captain Wildstar's response was immediate. "Come in."

Taking a brief second to figure out how to turn the oddly shaped door handle, Row entered. Wildstar was sitting at his desk with a cup of coffee and a stack of paperwork. He also couldn't help noticing the carved portrait of a bearded man wearing a Captains jacket and hat. There were a few framed pictures, one of the Captain, only much younger, standing next to a beautiful woman, who was slapping his hand away. Another picture was of a slightly older version of the same woman holding two children. Finally, there was a picture of Jordy's brother Mark that Row easily recognized; it was a copy of the picture Jordy kept on his own desk.

Row pulled his attention away from the photographs and focused on the Captain. "We are coming up on a large Gamilon debris field."

"Thank you, I'll be right down." Wildstar replied, but then hesitated, "Adam, you know Jordy pretty well, don't you?"

Suddenly uncomfortable, Adam Row shifted his footing. "About as well as anyone, sir."

"You don't have to answer, but what kind of a man is he?"

"He is a good man, sir, a bit hot headed at times, but very passionate," Row said.

"What is it that…"Wildstar started to ask, but stopped after glancing at his row of photographs. "Never mind. I'll be right down, and have the Gamilon captain and the bridge crew join us on the second bridge."

Row nodded, then left for the bridge.

Outside Yamato, random pieces of green painted hulls and oddly shaped pieces of metal gently drifted. A chair, a helmet, parts of Gamilon Fighters, and pieces of metal and plastic that would never be identified drifted in and around the larger hulls. The largest piece of hull was dwarfed by the space battleship Yamato.

The bridge crew watched each bit of debris as it drifted by on the second bridge's oversized monitors. They were transfixed, as if watching a horror film, expecting something to jump out at them from behind each piece of metal.

The Captain's chair, with Wildstar on it, lowered from the ceiling. It was Wildstar's direct lift to each of Yamato's command areas. A short time later Knox and another marine arrived with the Gamilon captain, Noble. While Wildstar and the marines took the view from outside in stride, Noble's composure slipped away to reveal a horrified expression. "How could this have happened?"

"We are about to find that out," Wildstar answered.

"Image from the Time Radar is ready." Eager called from his station. The Time Radar operated by collecting light neutrons that had long since dispersed and reassembling them to get images of things that had taken place in the resent past, a device that had proven invaluable to the Yamato many times in the past.

"Put it on the side panel," Wildstar said as Sandor, Noble and the rest of the bridge crew gathered around to see the image.

The screen showed a blurry image of what was beyond doubt a most impressive Gamilon fleet. As the video continued, the images became much sharper.

"That is the home fleet," Noble said.

To the side of the fleet, space seemed be rippling. It almost looked like space was a pool of water during a rain shower. From each ripple, emerged an alien ship. Some were fighters, some were destroyers, and others were battleships.

The Gamilon fleet was taken completely by surprise, as the ships scrambled to launch their fighters, and turn their guns on the attackers.

Despite the home fleet's size and strength, it was a pitifully short fight. One by one, each of the Gamilon ships was destroyed until finally, the image went black.

The second bridge was silent. No one quite believed the carnage they had just witnessed on the Time Radar.

Captain Noble stood rigidly still, his head down, and eyes closed, with his fist firmly clinched. Wildstar wasn't sure if Noble was trying to hold back tears, or to contain his anger. More likely, he thought, it was both.

"Eager, give copies of that data to Noble and Sandor," Wildstar ordered. "Sandor, I want you to study that, and find out exactly how it happened. I don't want the same thing to happen to us. I also want Sakagage go over the video to catalog the enemy ship types."

Wildstar paced the bridge, lost in thought, his path taking him from the captain's station to his old combat chief station and back. The Gamilon home world had been attacked, and the home fleet sent out to intercept the attackers. Instead the home fleet had been ambushed and eliminated. That would have left Gamilon practically defenseless. Could Gamilon have already fallen?

Not likely, Wildstar knew from experience that Deslock was not that easy to kill. But he wanted to know if the enemy's next move had been to move in on the Gamilon home world? Surely it must have been, he couldn't think of any other reason to go to all that effort to take out the home fleet if not to move against Gamilon immediately, unless it was a move to wipe out as much of their space fighting strength in one shot as possible. In order to cover the loss of the home fleet, Gamilon would be pulling their resources from other worlds, weakening their defenses elsewhere. It was just the beginning then, a first move in a game designed to wipe out the whole of the Gamilon Empire then.

Why attack Earth then? Did the enemy think that Earth was an ally of Gamilon? What of Earth's fleet then that had set to intercept the enemy, just as Gamilon's home fleet had? No doubt, a similar fate awaited them.

"Yumi, are we within communications range of either Earth or Gamilon?"

"No, Captain."

Wildstar exhaled deeply. "Captain Noble, we are no longer going to Gamilon. If you want to go home, I will lend you the Cosmo Hound. Or, if you stay out of our way, you can come with us. I need an answer."

Noble, too was silent for a few moments as he thought his choices over. "I will stay with you, Gamilon interests are at stake, and I must do my part to protect them." Turning, and followed by his Space Marine escorts, Noble left the bridge.

"Venture, we have the course our defense fleet was using to intercept the invaders. I want you to use that and plot a course that will let us intercept them as quickly as possible."

"Aye, Captain."

On Earth, a young policewoman walked from house to house. She was tired of her task, it was far too repetitive, and mundane… and painful.

She checked the house number, and then compared it to the census data she carried. House number 321 belonged to the Toban family, One adult male, one adult female, and two children. She knocked on the door and waited for an answer.

Quickly, a middle-aged woman opened the door, her face filled with hope and worry. Obviously, the policewoman was not who the woman was hoping to see, as the worry lines increased once she recognized the police uniform.

She swallowed, this job didn't get any easier. "Excuse me, I'm doing a check to see if anyone in your household is unaccounted for."

The woman nodded, "My husband hasn't been home since the attack."

"Where was he suppose to have been on the day of the attack?" she asked.

"He was working at the museum, downtown."

An enemy squad had been reported in the area of the museum. "I see. What is his name?"

"Alan, Alan Toban."

She punched the name into her database, which checked it against the names of the confirmed dead. It did not match, so the name was added to the list of the missing. On a second list she listed the names of the people who were still in the house, so they would be listed as safe, just in case anyone else reported them missing.

"Thank you. We will be in touch if we learn anything."

The policewoman walked away, and headed for the next house. There were no lights on in it, which was a very discouraging sign. She hoped she would not have to force her way in to ascertain weather or not the entire family had been taken.

On the bright side, she was glad that she didn't have to go through any of the apartment buildings downtown.

Homer was hunched intently over the plots and warp figures taken on the enemy fleet by every sensor that had been able to take a reading. If he just went by the most basic information, then the course the Andromeda II had taken was the best one to intercept them.

Unfortunately, something didn't add up. There were too many anomalous readings for Homer to simply take the readings at face value. Even after re-reading some of Sandor's earliest warp theory papers, and some of his theories about changing course mid warp, he still wasn't quite sure he knew how to decipher the readings, but he was beginning to get an idea.

He would have to cross check his theories with some other experts in order to come to a more decisive conclusion, but there was no hiding from what he had already found.

"Commander, I've found something!"

Mizutani hurried over as soon as he could disengage himself from the aid who was busy chewing the Commander's ear off about proposed evacuation plans. "What have you found, Homer?"

"I don't think the Andromeda is following the right trail. I will need to take the figures down to R&D to make sure."

Mizutani scowled. "Do it, but I hope you are wrong. The Andromeda is too far out, there is no way we can contact them to warn them if you are right."

Back on the Yamato's first bridge, Venture looked up from his calculations. "I have the new course plotted, sir, but the only way we can reach the fleet before they expect to intercept the enemy is to warp continuously."

"The engines can handle it," Orion called from the Engineering station.

Wildstar nodded to them both. "Very well. Warp."

Venture aligned the ship along its new heading, and increased speed to maximum, before bringing online the Warp computer. A steady beep sounded as a small dot moved from the top to the bottom of the readout, moving across a series of parallel lines. The dot moved past them to a point where the lines were no longer parallel, but crossed and intersected with each other before going parallel again. He began the count down.

"10. 9. 8." Gradually the dot continued to move.

"2. 1. 0." The dot intersected with the lines at the point where the lines all converged. "Warp!"

The ship rippled, and faded out of reality.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 11**

Captain Hawk stood alone in a small room on Gamilon. There was just himself, a bed, a small table, and his shame as he waited the verdict from the General's council. He had retreated, and saved most of his ships, but lost the planet he was supposed to have been guarding. The fact that General Peck had ordered him to return was no consolation to either his pride or the council that was attempting to determine whether or not his original tactical withdraw had been appropriate. Part of him wanted to be found guilty and executed, because there was no way he could make amends for what his errors had cost Gamilon.

He had heard the reports of what had happened on Uther after he left. Wholesale genocide of the Gamilons whom he had abandoned, and the indigenous population was forced to worship their new lords as gods. Worse, Uther was now a fortified position for the enemy. On top of that, the spies who had relayed that information had since met with horrible deaths. More deaths he was responsible for.

His side still hurt from the shrapnel that had struck him. He tried to take comfort in that, but knew he deserved a far worse punishment than what fate had dealt him.

The door opened and Talon walked into the room. The General had such a presence that his mere presence in the room made it seem twice a long as it had before.

"Thanks to a moving statement from General Peck and General Auctor, as well as a change in tactics, you have been cleared of all charges." General Talon waited, observing Hawk's reaction to the news.

Hawk swallowed, searching for moisture in his dry throat. He tried to think what that could mean for him, but his brain just didn't seem to be working.

Not quite satisfied with the reaction, Talon half raised an eyebrow and continued. "Our new defense plan is very similar to the maneuver you were planning when you withdrew your forces from Uther. Because of that insight, and a few other considerations, you have been awarded a promotion to Group Captain, and will command the First Defensive Fleet."

Hawk wanted to sit. He wanted to cry for joy, or to cry from outrage. He wanted this chance to make amends for his past mistake. He wanted this chance for revenge. He wanted to see Jarria to tell her about his fears and triumphs.

"You will leave in one hour for your command ship, the Battle Carrier Dommel."

Snapping to attention, Hawk gave his best salute. "Thank you, General."

"Do not thank me, Captain, just prove to us that we made the right decision."

Gladn rushed home from school, running past the square where hundreds of Gamilons had gathered wearing dark robes to protect them from the sun's harsh rays as they did their daily buying and selling at the market shops. The sun didn't bother Gladn as much as it did some of the older citizens. He supposed he was just more use to it.

"Gladn!"

The youth nearly tripped over himself in his attempt to continue going forward to home, while still turning to see who had called his name. It was old Charon, waving and calling from his booth near the edge of the Market Square.

Old Charon had a soft spot for kids, which, of course made him popular with the children who frequented his shop to take advantage of his generosity to get a few extra sweets on top of what they paid for. He also had a printing press in back and printed newsletters, calendars, or just about anything else that was called for. The previous year when Leader Deslock celebrated his birthday, old Charon printed up a few thousand birthday cards that people threw to Deslock as he past by in his parade. Gladn had thought that was a great idea too, but he mainly relied on Charon for an Earth food called chocolate. Charon also specialized in getting any special food imported.

Gladn rushed over to the booth as quickly as he could manage. Charon usually just interacted with those in his shop, he had never before actually called anyone over, so it was probably for something important. "Hi, Charon!"

Charon greeted the youth with a large smile. "I have a special treat for you today, Gladn!" He handed Gladn a stick with a few small hardened yellow clumps at the end. "They don't make this anymore, Gladn, but for you, it's on the house. Royal Bee Jelly dried and preserved to keep its natural flavor. Its one of Deslock's favorite foods."

Not sure what to expect, Gladn tasted it. It completely redefined his definition of what good tasted like… this sweet was unlike anything he had ever tasted before. "It is good. If it's this good and Deslock likes it, why did they stop making it?"

"You've an enquiring mind, lad, that's good, up to a point." The old man smiled, "Let's just say we lost the art of making this ourselves… and the world it comes from no longer exports it." Gladn wanted to inquire further, he disliked such vague answers, but Charon headed them off, "Just put it down to the fortunes of war."

Gladn still wasn't satisfied with that answer, but could tell he wasn't going to get a detailed explanation any time soon, so he simply plunged the stick back into his mouth for another taste.

"You are just about out of school now, aren't you, lad?"

Nodding, Gladn said, "Just a few more days."

"Are you going to join the military?"

Gladn's face betrayed his uncertainty. He paused while trying to think up a good answer. "I haven't decided yet."

For the first time, old Charon's smile reached his eyes. "Well… I was thinking that if you didn't already have a career lined up, that I could make use of a boy like you."

"What, you want me to work here?" Gladn asked. A job working for Charon would the ideal answer to his problems. That, and it would make all the younger children jealous of him.

"No, not here, lad. I've been getting lots of printing orders lately, and I need someone to delver them for me while I run the shop. Ill even let you use my truck."

Smiling, Gladn could do nothing but ask, "When do I start?"

Laughing, Charon said, "How about tomorrow?"

"Ill be here after school then!" Gladn said, and with a wave disappeared into the crowd to continue his walk home.

Once the boy was out of sight, the smile faded from Charon's face as if it had never been there at all. If any had seen him then, they would have thought he looked like he was dead inside. "Thanks lad. I knew I could count on you."

Three Gamilon destroyers fired in vain at their opponents. Their cannons, which were mounted inside round domes, with regularly spaced holes in the sides fired shot after shot. A few of the shots landed, doing negligible damage.

The enemy's counterattack was devastating. Each of the destroyer was rocked heavily with explosions. The enemy fired again, and two of the destroyers exploded instantly.

The third destroyer continued to fire, despite the medium sized hole in its hull, until finally the small ship's engineering crew lost their fight to keep the fire away from the main power reactor. The Destroyer's midsection swelled half a second before the entire ship exploded.

With the small defense fleet, gone, another planet was lost to the Gamilon Empire.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 12**

Venture had lost track of the number of warps he had completed… fortunately they were preprogrammed into the ship. The console was blinking at him indicating it was ready for another double warp. He was already sick to his stomach, and wanted to allow himself to slip into unconsciousness.

A glance behind him showed that Captain Wildstar was completely unphased by the warps, and Venture was not going to show any weakness while the captain was around. He reached forward and pulled the warp lever one more time.

Beside Venture, Row was also struggling to remain conscious, while Yumi had lost her battle and was slumped against the communications console.

Once again the ship bent and melted around them, their chairs were free of the floor and floated free.

Row looked to his left, and saw himself, but his other self did not notice him as it was looking to its left at yet another self. He forced himself to look away from himself, and saw Venture who was looking very sick as he slumped himself over a passing galaxy.

Captain Kitano stood up from his bridge command station to study the stars. Something was not right. He knew it. Every instinct screamed it. Their calculations said they should have intercepted the enemy fortress here, but there was nothing.

"I don't like this." Dash spoke from the Combat Chief station at the front of the bridge. "It should be here. Even if they can hide from our sensors, we should have picked up something!"

"Time Radar reads negative too."

No, Kitano definitely did not like the feel of this. "Signal the fleet. All stop."

Turning to the Captain, Dash asked, "Could they have evaded us?"

Kitano knew, just as Dash did, that Space Warps didn't work like that. At least, they never had before. Something was very wrong. "Dash, ready the Wave Motion Guns."

Dash jumped back into his seat and began to run his pre-firing procedures.

Tokugawa, formerly the Yamato's chief engineer, and now the Andromeda's began the power buildup that Dash would need in order to fire the gun. He looked up at his captain. "What setting to you want for the gun?"

"Just charge it. I won't know what shot to use until I see what's waiting for us."

Dieldrin carefully studied the image of the Andromeda II and the rest of the Earth fleet. The Andromeda just sat there like it was waiting for something, while the other ships looked like they were nervous, making minor adjustments to their gun turrets. The fools didn't even have a target yet. "You were right to proceed with this phase, High Lord Sodoman. The armada the Earth sent against us is pitifully small."

"Remember, Dieldrin, the Humans are very dangerous. That is why we must eliminate them." The image of Sodoman said.

"Of course, High Lord," Dieldrin acknowledged while bowing to the High Lord's image as the connection was broken. "Its time to begin."

The space fortress was still nowhere to be seen, but suddenly, Kitano found himself facing thousands of ships. Thousands, against his hundreds. Time to even the odds. He pulled a set of dark goggles down over his eyes. "Set wave gun to Scattershot… Fire."

Deep in the Andromeda's engine room, an engineer ran to the forward weapons consol, and pulled the large lever there to the "S" position. His action was rewarded with movement at the front of the engine room where the two Wave Motion Gun emitters were located side by side. A huge revolver like chamber moved, changing the Gun's equivalent of a firing pin from the standard single wave version to the Scattershot version which had been first invented for use with the original Andromeda.

Back on the bridge, Dash carefully lined up the crosshairs on the wave gun scope with the center of the enemy fleet, then he too lowered his goggles before pulling the trigger.

For just a second, the Andromeda II's twin Wave Motion Gun firing gates seemed to glow, attracting stray particles of energy, then the energy was released and the bridge was bathed in a blinding light as two beams of tachyon wave energy leapt from the Andromeda towards the enemy fleet.

Halfway between the Andromeda and the target, wave motion energy split into thousands of tiny beams that arched around the perimeter of the enemy fleet, surrounding it. Then the destruction began as the individual arcs of wave energy plunged into enemy fleet. For a moment it looked as if space itself were exploding, and not just a few thousand ships.

Finally, the explosions died down enough for the Andromeda's sensors to distinguish between a fully active ship and a fireball. Kitano eagerly estimated the amount of damage his first salvo had caused.

It had not done enough. There were still too many ships. Would they sit still long enough for him to build up another charge for the Wave Motion Gun? He didn't think so. "Shock Cannons, fire." This was going to be a tough one. "Launch all fighters."

Each of Andromeda's turrets lined up with a target and fired, found a new target and fired again. A few missed, but most of them scored direct hits, causing their targets to explode. A few well placed hits managed to take out two or more ships in a single shot.

A door on the bottom of the Andromeda opened, fighter after fighter launched from the opening. Those fighters joined the fighters from the other ships. Soon the entire sky was full of ships.

Two of destroyers flanking Andromeda fired their own Wave Motion Guns. Their guns were not equipped for scattershot, but they were no less impressive, as the beams tore through everything they touched.

The shock cannon fire of the Destroyers joined that of the Andromeda, as they spread out into a line to give each of their guns the best possible firing angle.

Dieldrin looked in horror at his battle screens. Already a third of his entire fleet was gone, just gone. Utterly destroyed, and the pitiful Earth fleet had done it with their first volley. Fortunately the shock cannons they were relying on now did not do the same level of damage that the weapon they first used did. He turned to his fleet commander, "Fire, damn you! Destroy those Earth ships!"

The Andromeda rocked with the first impact. It rocked again, and an explosion echoed from somewhere in the ship. One of the destroyers exploded. Yes, Kitano thought, this was definitely going to be a tough one.

With the same abrupt rudeness as when it left, reality snapped back into place.

Venture weakly checked the navigation coordinates. His mind vaguely registered that they were still not at the planned destination, so his hand reached for the warp lever once more.

His hand didn't make it, as Wildstar's hand gently, but firmly intercepted it.

Confused and nauseous, Venture looked up at his captain, and took the offered bag, which he immediately emptied the containments of his stomach into.

"I forgot they had never been through a warp before," Sandor apologized.

"They did better than we did on our first warp," Eager added.

Wildstar walked back to his command station, and called to sickbay. "Doctor Sane to the bridge." Then looking to Sandor, "I just wonder how the rest of the crew did."

With a rolling hiss sound, the elevator door opened, granting Dr. Sane and IQ-9 access to the bridge.

"All right, what seems to be the problem?" the doctor asked, looking around the bridge. "Ah, warp sickness. Don't worry about a thing, Captain. I've got just the thing!" The Doctor proudly displayed his sake bottle. "It'll put hairs on their chests!"

"Just as long as they are not too drunk to fight a battle, Doctor."

IQ-9 went over to tend to Yumi. She awoke with a start, and gave a short scream when she realized where IQ-9 was placing his hands. Her clipboard clanged as she threw it at his quickly retreating head.

Row and Venture made less dramatic recoveries

"Doctor, Go through the ship and make sure all everyone is in good shape. We only need to complete one more warp before we catch up to the Andromeda. Report when that is done."

"All right, Captain… Come on, IQ. Stop having fun with the ladies and help me work."

"This is a very simple task for a series 9 genius class robot," the robot complained, although he obediently followed.

"Captain!"

"Yes, Yumi?"

"I'm picking up combat signals from the Andromeda and the rest of the fleet." She said with a worried voice. "I don't think they are winning, sir."

"Get a fix on their location, Yumi." Wildstar said, and then swiftly pressed the battle stations alarm.

All through out the ship, what crewmen were able, scrambled to their combat stations. Four crewmen manned each turret, another crewman for each pulse laser battery, torpedo and missile crews scrambled to their stations, while the Black Tiger fighter pilots slid down quick-tubes to the hanger before scrambling into their cosmo fighters.

Kei closed the blast doors around Hydroponics, and then checked that her own pistol was charged.

Knox and the rest of the Space Marines donned their combat armor and space helmets, and then moved to strategic locations throughout the ship, equally ready to repel boarders, to board enemy ships, or make assault planetary landings; whatever the situation would require, they were ready.

The ship's cook unlocked the galley weapon's locker, put on a pistol and holster, then went back to the stew he was preparing for lunch.

On the bridge, Yumi completed her task. "I have the location. 045 degrees at 200,000 Megameters."

"Venture, there is likely to be a lot of debris, so place us clear of the battle site."

Finally, Doctor Sane called up to the bridge with his crew report. "They're all OK, Derek."

"Ok, Venture. Warp."

The lever was pulled, replacing reality with the shifting dimensions of a space warp.

Another section of the Andromeda's hull exploded, smoke from the fire within the ship billowed out into space. The ships remaining shock cannons continued to fire shot after shot.

Cosmo fighters danced around the shock cannon fire, to make surgical strikes on the enemy battleships, then turned to dogfight with the enemy fighters that had followed them through the maelstrom.

More enemy ships were being destroyed than Earth ships, but Kitano knew full well that with the numbers the enemy still had, the end result would be the same. He was running out of ships, and the enemy was not giving him an opening to escape.

On the video panel, Kitano noticed Destroyer #44 pulling ahead of the fleet. Apparently trying to make some kind of heroic gesture, by rushing the enemies position, at the same time depriving itself of the covering fire from the rest of the fleet. "Radio 44, Tell them to get back into formation!"

"Too late!" Dash called.

The destroyer erupted into a fireball.

"Can we get a signal through to Earth?" Kitano asked, as another hit knocked him to the floor.

Wildstar studied the battle that was taking place on the main video panel. The battle was too clustered to use the wave motion gun. It would have to be shock cannons and missiles then.

"The enemy fleet is within range of the main guns, but so is our own fleet," Eager reported from the radar station. "The Black Tigers are in position."

"Venture change our heading by 90 degrees. I want to give them a full broadside. Be sure to keep the ship steady for our gunners.

"Row, aim carefully. Shock cannons and side missile tubes."

All five of Yamato's turrets turned towards the battle taking place to the side of Yamato. The hull plates covering the missile tubes below the pulse laser batteries slid open.

The shock cannons fired. One beam came from each of the three barrels on each turret. In sets of three, the beams from the individual barrels twisted and merged with the other beams from its turret, making the energy beam that much more powerful. A total of five energy beams stretched out from the Yamato, over the Andromeda and her fleet, and impacted with five enemy battleships. Each beam destroyed their targets utterly, and destroyed one or two ships behind it as well.

The turret barrels shifted slightly, then fired again. The slight change made by the barrels, shifted the course of the combined beams so that the second volley of shots destroyed targets in completely different areas of the battlefield.

Missile trails followed the shock cannon energy beams. They followed a straight course until they passed over the bow of the Andromeda, then split up; each missile found a different target.

"Cease fire." Wildstar ordered. "Turn us back and take us below the enemy forces. Ready the stack missiles, and reposition the shock cannons for the next assault. Tell the Black Tigers to make their run."

Dieldrin watched in horror as the ships all around him were unexpectedly destroyed by a new assault. "Where did that come from??"

"A new ship just warped into this sector!"

"An Earth ship?" he asked as another volley of missiles destroyed another line of his destroyers.

"Yes—Fighters, from above!!"

A fresh wave of human fighters soared down upon his capital ships, and he didn't have any fighters available to send against them since they were all engaged against the Andromeda's squadrons. He had to admire the precision of this new wave of pilots. Most of them were able to destroy a ship with only two of their missiles.

A flash of plane dived past the bridge window, so close, he could swear he heard the roar of the engines. The front of his command ship erupted in flame as missiles from the fighter impacted with his hull. The fighter turned up and strafed a wounded destroyer with laser fire. The destroyer exploded.

"Damage control to the fore compartments!"

"Sir! The Earth ship, its moved!!"

"Where? Where is it? Find it!!"

"The Andromeda is disengaging!"

"Don't let any Earth Ships escape!"

"The fighters have disengaged."

Blue-white shock cannon beams erupted through the fleet once more, this time from below. Again, each beam found multiple targets. Ships exploded throughout the fleet.

This time the shock cannon attack was followed by wave after wave of small missiles, no single missile was powerful enough to destroy a ship, but when they hit in sets of three, that didn't seem to matter.

On the tactical monitors, it was painfully obvious that the surprise attack had left his fleet in complete disarray. The Andromeda and her fleet was escaping, and he wasn't even sure exactly where this new ship was. His own command ship wouldn't take another hit before being destroyed. He still had a numerical superiority, but it was useless when he couldn't get them reorganized in time to prevent the Earth ships from escaping, or destroying the new one.

Wait a moment… the Andromeda was not escaping; it was reforming with the other ships in what remained of its fleet. They were lining themselves up with the front of each ship facing his fleet, as if they were preparing to re-enter the battle.

No, they were not going to reengage at close range at all! They were going to use their wave weapon's again! "Withdraw! Withdraw at once!"

Dieldrin's first officer gave him a confused stare, "What sir?"

"I said retreat, NOW! Warp! All ships, warp."

Dieldrin's command ship warped, and was soon followed by several other ships. The rest were instantly incinerated by the combined blast from the wave motion guns from the remaining Earth ships, before they had a chance to follow the order to retreat.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 13**

Mizutani slowly approached Homer's station, not wanting to give Homer the latest news that had come from the secondary communications post since Homer had been busy with his research project. Homer looked up at the Commander as he approached. "Well, Homer, the Andromeda reports their mission a failure."

Homer fixed Mizutani with a vacant expression, his body unable to move.

"They never saw the fortress, instead they were ambushed at the estimated interception point. The fleet took heavy losses, and is on its way back now."

"And Yamato?"

"Yamato is not returning. They are not sure where to go yet, but they plan to continue the search."

His mind was too numb, all Homer could do was nod. Derek at least would continue to look. He knew Derek's determination, he would find them.

"One last thing," Commander Mizutani continued, "We completed compiling the list of missing persons. I thought you should be the one to send it to Yamato and the fleet."

"There is something else," Homer said. "I have a new set of coordinates showing the fortress's true warp destination."

"How is that possible? The science of calculating warp destinations is very precise."

"When the fortress warped, our sensors detected an unusual variance in the warp signature. For lack of a better term, the enemy has found a way to turn their ship during a warp. During their space warp, they performed some form of energy shunt, which changed their destination to a new space/time point. My theory is that it was all pre-planned. They knew we would not be able to identify the warp shunt, and had another ship warp to the original destination point, and then warp out again to lead our fleet to the ambush point."

Homer held up a stack of oversized papers, charts and maps. "I have all the calculations right here."

"Send that data to Yamato too. And tell them, that when they find the enemy, that they are to send for the fleet."

In his own way, Pleb had been relentless. "The People need to be kept informed." he had said. "It will boost their morale and confidence in you. The greater their morale, the more they will be willing to go with out in order to support the war effort."

"So you want me to tell them we are winning, and everything will be back to normal in a few days? I will not lie to them, Pleb."

"You should not lie, but you should not paint a purely positive picture of the war for them either." Pleb went on, "You must show that this is a hard but just fight, and that is why they must sacrifice. You must not let them forget the realities of war, lest they come to view individual casualties as a reason to stop fighting."

"We cannot stop the fight now, Pleb. Our enemy will only grow stronger if we ignore it."

"I know this, Leader Deslock," Pleb said, remaining firm, but not once looking Deslock in the eyes. "But already those who were not directly effected by the attack are forgetting that the threat, the insult exists. While we need to keep your people safe, it is important that they not loose all of their fear."

"Very well, Pleb. I will address the population. Call for an assembly," Deslock ordered, then walked in silence for several steps. "Pleb."

"Yes, Leader Deslock?"

"Exactly what sacrifices are being asked of the people?"

Pleb seemed mildly surprised by the question, but was ready with an answer. "Food rations have been significantly cut. Power costs for the population have increased to cover increased military power needs. Also, curfews have been leveled in many providences."

Deslock's eyes shifted to watch Pleb a little closer. Only twice had such sacrifices been made of his people, and not in situations such as this one. "Who ordered those limitations?"

"General Auctor issued the orders."

Deslock waited in his room until the assembly was called, but when it was ready, he wasted no time before leaving his office and making the walk to his throne.

Deslock entered the room to the familiar chanting from everyone in the room. "Deslock, Deslock, Deslock!" They repeated, over and over as he calmly walked down the red carpet, between rows and rows of officers and soldiers. Camera were already set up in the room and were broadcasting everything to the general population.

Reaching his throne, Deslock turned, and raised a hand, which silenced the chanting. "People of Gamilon!"

All eyes were on Deslock, utter silence filled the room as everyone waited for him to speak again.

"Our space, our very planet has been attacked, ruthlessly violated by an unknown enemy! A portion of our civilian population has been abducted for unknown reasons. Our colonies on Uther and other worlds have been attacked and obliterated. Our home fleet has been destroyed, and many of our colony defense fleets have met similar fates."

Deslock's voice was filled with the passion of his youth, and he did not mind that a touch of anger showed in his voice and gestures.

"It is past time we avenged this outrage; this insult. All of our energies will now go towards the total annihilation of this enemy. No matter the cost to ourselves; we will show this new enemy that none may confront Gamilon without facing our retribution!"

The crowd erupted in cheering, which was soon replaced with the repeated chanting of "Deslock, Deslock, Deslock."

Deslock waited a moment, before raising his hand to quiet the crowd again. "Our new fleet is now in place, the enemy will not find us such an easy target now. Together, we will meet the challenge that has been placed upon Gamilon! We will surpass that challenge, and cast a challenge back upon our enemy, that they will not be able to overcome!"

Again the cheering picked up, but this time instead of stopping it, Deslock turned to make his exit. Soon, Talon was at his ear. "Leader Deslock," Talon whispered, "You are needed in the planning room."

Deslock nodded without breaking step. Only his destination had changed.

Deslock and Talon walked into the planning room to find Auctor and a few other generals already there waiting for them. Aside from Auctor, they were very uncomfortable. General Hoven was busy pacing and talking to himself, but not loud enough for anyone to make out what he was saying. Carcer and Koffin were busy hovering over their chairs.

"Well, Gentlemen?" Deslock asked.

General Hoven spoke first, "We have received a communication from the enemy."

"What does it say?"

General Auctor held up a datadisk, "We were not able to trace the signal back to its source, unfortunately." He inserted the disk into his slot on the table.

The video panel mounted in the table changed to reveal a thin humanoid with grey-white skin and almost reddish brown hair. The image seemed to look around the room before speaking.

"Greetings, Leader Deslock," The image said, "I am Malathin, a Lord of the great Nation of the Lupries. Your people speak highly of you. Their safety depends on themselves; and on you.

"You and your race are already dead, you died with your planet so many years ago. Please let us put you out of your misery. Do not fight your destruction." The image was replaced with the default panel images as the message ended."

Turning, Deslock began to walk back out of the room.

"Leader Deslock," Talon asked, "What should we do? Do you want to respond to the message?"

Pausing slightly, Deslock said, "I'm told the proper response to such a message, would be 'Idiots.' Send no reply."

After Deslock's speech had finished, Charon cast a look over at Gladn and the kids who were busy drooling over his candy stock. Every single one of them had been transfixed by Deslock's every word. They had stars in their eyes, already beginning to romanticize the upcoming ship battles and glory. Glory where none was to be had.

"You know what he is doing don't you?" he asked Gladn, loud enough for his audience to hear.

"He's going to get revenge on the people who attacked us." Gladn replied, with many of the kids nodding in agreement. Some of the wishing Gladn had expressed himself in more passionate terms. Well, that was why Charon liked Gladn so much.

"That is what he says, yes. So we will go to war against whoever Deslock says is our enemy. Who knows if he will pick the right one. He just wants to get us into another foreign war we don't belong in."

Gladn and his audience were less than convinced. Ok, time to raise the stakes then. "Do you know what happens in war?" he asked, more looking at the kids than Gladn.

None of them answer, although more through intimidation than a feeling they did not know the answer.

"People die. Your Moms and Dads will go off to war and when they come back it will be in pieces placed tiny little boxes. And when they run out of Moms and Dads, they will send your brothers and sisters, and once they are gone, then they will have to send you, just so the military can have their 'glory' and their 'revenge.' Do you still think this war is such a good idea?"


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 14

Jordy Venture and Adam Row were happy to finally have a chance to relax and get some food in the Yamato's mess hall. They weren't the only ones; the room was just about filled to capacity. They had to inch their way past standing and sitting crewmembers to get their trays.

The next step was easy, they simply set their trays down and allowed a conveyer belt to carry the trays under a series of machines that automatically deposited pre-measured food amounts in each of the tray's slots. "Is it my imagination or is this the same stuff they served us last meal?" Venture asked.

"No, that was Meatloaf. The menu says this is Salisbury Steak," Row replied.

Just in front of them, Eager looked back at them. "Don't worry about it, tomorrow they will chop the meat up into smaller pieces, mix it with noodles and call it beef stroganoff. "

"Hey, Eager," Venture called, "with menus like that, what is the longest you have gone without someone killing the cook?"

Eager just laughed, but Lucas tapped Venture on the shoulder. "I wouldn't try it. I hear cooks specialize in hand to hand combat, just in case someone doesn't like the food."

Dr. Sane's voice rose up to be heard over the crowded dinner conversations. "Knox, that wasn't pudding, that was Mimi's cat food!"

Finally their trays reached the end of the food line, leaving Venture and Row standing in place, looking for a place to sit. Eager had long since disappeared, joining a group of veteran crewmembers. A second later, Lucas was standing right next to them, looking just as lost.

Orion noticed the plight of the three young crewmembers just as he was finishing the last of his potato salad. Checking that the three engineers he was sitting with were also done, he waved them over. "Hey, Venture. You can have this table, our shift is about to start."

"Thanks, Orion," Venture replied, and gave a nodding thank you to the other engineers who were giving up their seats for him, Row and Lucas.

The food certainly didn't taste any different from the previous meatloaf.

Row looked up from his meal, and nudged Venture, gesturing towards Yumi who stood, holding her tray and looked just as lost as they had. Venture was strangely quiet, so Row stood and waved her down. "Hey, Yumi, over here!"

Smiling, Yumi brought her tray over and joined them at the table. "Thanks, Guys," she said. The three men were more than willing to make as much room for her as she needed.

Unnoticed by any at the table, Kei took her own tray and walked through the cafeteria, finding a free seat at another crowded table, but somehow still managing to eat alone.

"You guys did really great during the battle," Yumi said, then took another bite of what they assumed to be mashed potatoes.

"Thanks," Row said with a big boyish grin, while Lucas only nodded.

"uh.. Yeah, Thanks," Venture added a second later. For some reason, he just was not able to get his voice to work around her.

"Isn't our captain great?" Yumi added a few seconds later.

Suddenly, Venture found that his voice hadn't gotten away from him after all. "What do you mean?" he asked with a hint of anger in his tone. "What's so special about HIM?"

Yumi tilted her head to one side, not quiet understanding or maybe not noticing Ventures reaction. "Well, everything. Didn't you see him? The way he was in complete control. His every word, every action was so completely controlled."

Row tried to lay a calming hand on his friend's shoulder. Softly warning him, "Relax, Jordy."

Jordy Venture was already on his feet. "There is nothing great about him! Sure, he may win a lot, but look at the cost in lives! I really can't believe you, he has you totally fooled!"

"Jordy," Row said, louder this time, trying to distract his friend before he made a complete fool of himself.

Yumi completely missed Venture's outburst, her attention was fixed entirely on the door to the mess hall where the door was open to reveal Wildstar talking with Sandor. Their conversation came to an end and Wildstar walked in and grabbed a tray.

Standing, she called out to him. "Captain! You can sit with us!"

"Ok, that's it. I'm going to lay down." Venture said, walking away from the table in disgust. Row watched him go, and just sighed.

Wildstar didn't make a move to indicate that he even heard Yumi call to him. He simply made his way over to sit with a group of officers on the far side of the room.

"Where did your friend go? Is he OK?" She asked Row.

"Well, you know… its juts one of those things with him. He just needs some time to cool off. Do you have any after dinner plans?"

Yumi smiled and gave Row an appraising look. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well," Adam Row said, "I hear the upper observation deck is rather romantic."

"Sounds nice," she said with an even larger smile.

Row stood with Yumi on the third bridge level. The bridge was empty, with the ship being run by the relief crew on the second bridge. Confused, he studied the back wall again. "I could have sworn it was on the bridge level. We took that elevator to here… how do we get to it?"

With a grunt, Yumi wandered over to check her station.

"Oh, there it is," Row said, while looking out of a rear window. "Its down a level."

"Forget about that right now, Adam," she said, "There is a message in the queue from Earth." She pushed a few buttons, and started printing a hard copy of the message, and looked over it as it printed. "We have to show this to the Captain. Now."

"Well, he might still be in the mess hall."

"That is too public." She hit the toggle for the intercom. "Captain Wildstar to the bridge, please. Captain to the bridge."

After paging the captain, she handed the message over to Row, who scanned the long list of names.

"Any one you know on there?" She asked.

"Yeah."

The elevator door opened, admitting Wildstar to the bridge. He looked around quickly to assess the situation, and seemed slightly surprised to see that there was none. "Yumi, Row," he said, looking at each of them in turn. "What is it?"

With careful precision, Row handed him the printout as Yumi explained. "We received a communication from Earth. The corrected warp trace of the enemy fortress… and a list of the missing people."

Sensing the unspoken warning of her words, Wildstar skipped down to the bottom of the list, only allowing himself a glimpse of the "Ws." The names he did not want to see were plainly visible on the list. He slowly paced over near his old station and traced the path to Nova's radar station. He didn't want them to see his face, in case he let something slip. No wonder Avatar always kept his hat down over his eyes.

"If there is anything I can do to help," Yumi offered her open ended offer for assistance, but Wildstar made no move to acknowledge it.

"Post the list for the crew. We won't change course until everyone has gotten the news," Wildstar said, then disappeared into the elevator.

The engine room wasn't exactly a quiet place to think, but it really wasn't that noisy either, at least not unless the engines were being stressed. It was mainly filled with the whirr of the two large fly-wheels that were constantly spinning on the main engine cylinder. Venture also found the gold color that dominated the engine room somewhat relaxing, so he found himself half laying, half sitting against one of the control panels of the main engine. He lost himself, feeling his mind waxing and waning with the sound of the engine.

"Jordy Venture?" The chief engineer, Orion, roused him back to the present. "What are you doing here?"

Without getting up, Venture craned his neck to look at the engineer. "I'm sorry, Orion. I just needed a place to think."

Orion smiled at that. "You feel more at home here in the Engine Room, do you? My dad always said you would grow up to be an engineer."

"What?" Jordy asked, genuinely surprised that this engineer, whom he didn't really know, had heard such an odd thing about him.

Orion looked around clandestinely, before going to a side work panel. Opening it, he pulled out an old framed photograph of a man who looked a lot like Orion, only with white hair, and less of it on top. "This is my Dad, he likes to keep an eye on me sometimes so I keep his picture near. He was the original chief engineer when Yamato left for Iscandar.

"He wrote a lot about you, Wildstar and your brother in letters that he sent to me and my niece, Cathleen."

Venture looked back to the flywheels, thinking some more. "What about you, Orion, have you served with the Captain long?"

"Yes, of course. I signed on right after my dad was killed." Orion replaced the picture, then pulled out his favorite wrench and set to work on a panel near Venture.

Venture was having a hard time controlling his emotions, attempting to decide exactly what to ask to find out what he needed to know. Finally he settled on, "What kind of a man is he?"

Orion peered around the panel he was working on to look at Venture, to judge exactly what he really wanted to know. Ventures eyes betrayed him. "Can't you tell? He is a very caring man. Sometimes he cares too much, I think, but he doesn't blame others when things go wrong. He just does his best to keep going on. We should all do the same."

It was not what Venture wanted to hear, they both knew that. He would be forced to come out and say it. "Why did he let my brother die?"

Orion stopped working, and found himself lost in a memory nearly five years old. "I don't think he knew," he said, "Mark didn't want any of us to know."

He stopped all pretence of work, and propped himself up on his elbows, "Jordy, the Captain has lost all the family he ever had. His parents, Captain Avatar, his brother are all dead. He was even forced to watch as his only niece was killed."

The scene replayed itself in Orion's mind as he once again saw Sasha, who had asked to stay behind on the false Earth, as she pleaded with her uncle to use the Wave Motion Gun to destroy the base she was on.

He brought his mind back to the present. "In the end, the only family Wildstar had was Nova, the love of his life, and Mark, whom he loved as a brother. But Mark also loved Nova deeply. I think that was what kept Wildstar and Nova from marrying for so long. He didn't want to risk upsetting Mark by taking her for himself. In the end, it was Mark's final request that Derek make Nova happy, that got them to marry. He is trying to start a new family now, and its not easy on him, especially when they are so far away."

"Wait a minute, you said Mark? Mark Venture?" Jordy Venture asked.

"Yes. Dad said that Mark Venture and Derek Wildstar were almost inseparable even before they signed on the Yamato. I think Wildstar is the only person who feels as deeply about your brother's death as you do."

Venture stood his thoughts in more turmoil than before. "Thanks Orion," he said as he left the engine room.

Venture walked the halls of the Yamato, but his mind was nowhere near. It was on Earth, and several years in the past. He remembered playing soccer with Mark on the green fields. He remembered saying to his brother, "I want to join the Star Force, just like you. I want to fly in the Cosmo Zero, and fight to save Earth just like you." He had been so stupid back then.

His brother had smiled and chuckled at him, "Don't be so hasty, Jordy. There is more to it than fighting and glory. There are a lot of hard times too." Then, Marks voice got that far away feeling to it, "There are the lost friends, and lost loves." The smile returned, "Anyway, if we do our job right, there will be no need for Yamato by the time you grow up."

That had been a long time ago. How long, eight years? He lost track.

"Hey, Jordy!" It was a voice from the present that called to him. It sounded like Row. Looking up, he saw that it was Row, with Yumi beside him.

"Hey, guys." He said.

"We were worried about you," Yumi said. "Have you heard the news?"

"I'm OK now, I just had some thinking to do. What news?"

"We have gotten a list of people the enemy took. You may want to check it to see if your family is safe," she said.

Venture gave a morose half smile, "probably are, I don't have that much family left either. Where is the list?"

"Posted in each of the side observation decks."

Kei heard what sounded like a computer overloading, and was nearly knocked down by a rampaging IQ-9.

The robot then stopped in the middle of the observation deck, turned abruptly towards the door before charging for it at full speed. He did pause slightly to take the time to hit the wall next to the door before leaving.

She accepted an offered hand up, and paused to collect herself. It wasn't every day that she was run down by a mad robot.

Slipping back into the crowd she reached the front and skimmed the list. She felt a tightening of her stomach as she read down the list. So many names. She found a few that she knew. Based on how people were acting, she figured that just about everybody either had family or friends on the list. Kei found the name of her sister, which resulted in a tightened worry sensation on top of the already tight feelings of worry already in her stomach. She turned to go, and in the process nearly knocked Jordy Venture down.

Venture didn't notice, he was too busy with making his way to the front of the crowd to check the list for his own family names. Fortunately he didn't find any names that he knew directly. He did check the "W's" out of curiosity, and found "Nova Wildstar, Miyuki Wildstar, and Mark Wildstar" among the names listed. He didn't want to, he wanted to hate the man, but he couldn't help feeling sorry for his captain.

Sandor had already come by to express his sympathy, which was very considerate since Sandor tried to avoid interacting with his feelings as much as possible. But Wildstar found he preferred being alone.

The bow of Yamato stretched out before his cabin window, and the stars beyond were an impressive sight. It seemed to be lacking, though. He just tried to stand, looking out to find some sort of balance between the emptiness and worry he found within himself. Not far below that, he knew the anger was waiting. He did not want to give in to the anger, not yet. As a captain, he had to have a clear-cut plan.

Despite his best efforts his anger cut through the hopelessness and despair he had wrapped himself in. The anger cut through everything, dominating his very being.

How strange, it actually wasn't anger at all. Somehow the anger of his youth had become resolve. He would bring them home. He had to, there was no other option. He would bring them home, and he would bring them home alive. All of them. He would dedicate as much of his spare time as he could to devising plans that would bring that about.

Next to the resolve was the worry, and the question: Where was Nova and was she all right?


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 15**

Groggily, Nova opened her eyes. Almost fresh air greeted her nostrils, and the sight of blowing leaves was before her eyes. She remembered running through the streets with her children in tow, trying to escape the armored soldiers. She remembered failing at that task, and sat bolt upright.

"Mark? Miyuki? Where are you?" she called. She stood up and looked around. All around her were unconscious people. They were all civilians from the look of them.

She would not panic. She would not allow herself to panic.

In a rush she tried to make a systematic search of the people around her. Fortunately, she didn't have to look very far before she found her own children, Mark and Miyuki.

"Where are we?" Miyuki asked.

"I don't know, sweetie." Nova looked further out at the horizon, but didn't see anything that she recognized, but she did see that more and more people were beginning to come to.

There was one thing she could use as a landmark, and that was a stone structure. It looked like an alter of some sort, it was obviously manufactured, even if it looked like it was made from rock.

A voice thundered from all round them. It was harsh, but not unfriendly. "Welcome home to your promised land. You are welcome to make whatever lives for yourselves that you wish. I shall be happy to provide for you. Whatever you desire shall be yours if you ask for it aloud at the alter. Know that I am your Lord, and shall tolerate no other gods."

Nova and the other startled humans were then left in silence.

"You are too easy on them, Lord Malathin," Cyani said. He was often critical, and did not believe in giving even an inch. If it were up to him, Malathin doubted there would be any prisoners left alive at all.

"Nonsense, they are where we can enact our experiments on them, and they cannot escape. What more do you want?"

Cyani sniffed, "You should force them to rely on the alter to get what they need."

"No, I know these humans. Eventually some would give in and worship us in order to survive, but a majority of them would sooner die."

"Then let them."

"We can be merciful. I have provided them with trees to build with, soil fertile enough for farming, and seeds for growing. They have edible roots and berries to keep them alive until their crops come in. A hard life for a noble people, yet you would prefer that I break them."

"Yes, Lord. I would. We are the superior beings, they should acknowledge it."

Malathin excitedly pointed to the monitor showing the human habitat, "Look, already they are building a communal shelter for themselves. I didn't expect that to happen so soon, someone must have taken charge.

"Yes, Cyani, we are the superior race, and that is why I can show mercy. Ironic, though isn't it? We can do all of this, and yet we are still a dieing people, resorting to kidnapping other races in hopes that by studying them, we can save ourselves."

It was obvious that mere words would not win Cyani over to his way of thinking. Just as well, it was time for the conference. With a wave of Malathin's hand, the screens showing the Human habitat were replaced with images of High Lord Sodoman and the other Lords.

"Malathin, what is your report?" The high lord demanded.

"The humans are adjusting to their habitat, we will begin testing soon. Gamilon testing is also continuing. The message requesting the pacification by the Gamilons has been sent." His report complete, Malathin took a step back, and waited to see if he would be called on again.

"Now for Dieldrin's report," Sodoman ordered menacingly.

Dieldrin knew he was in trouble, his skin was even paler than usual, and he was visibly sweating. "Our forces engaged the Earth Defense Fleet, and destroyed 60 of their fleet before they unexpectedly received reinforcements."

"What kind of reinforcements?" Sodoman interrupted.

"A single Earth Battleship, High Lord."

"No doubt it was the same Star Force that defeated the Gamilon empire. Continue."

"The new battleship took us by surprise, and opened a corridor through which the rest of the Earth fleet withdrew and regrouped." Dieldrin swallowed, and took a deep breath. "After repeated use of some form of wave weapon, my fleet was defeated. I suffered 90 losses."

"There is no excuse for such a loss Dieldrin." Sodoman said. "You will be executed."

Instantly, the monitor showing Dieldrin winked out.

"Moving on," Sodoman continued, "Antimony, your report."

Antimony stepped forward on his screen. "Yes, High Lord. We have taken three more of Gamilon's outer colony worlds. I have noticed that the last world we took had next to no defense fleet, while I would have expected them to begin reinforcing their colony worlds instead. It is possible we have overestimated the Gamilon forces.

"We have also established contact with dissidents on the Gamilon home world, and will help them stage a revolution, which should further help to destabilize the Gamilon Empire, making its complete eradication even easier."

"Excellent. I will now listen to recommendations for the replacement of Dieldrin."

The stars were recognizable constellations, Nova thought, so they must be somewhere on Earth. But that didn't really make sense either, since the fruit, although good, was nothing she had seen before. There was no sign of guard posts, so where ever they were must be pretty remote. She wasn't sure how or if the enemy was watching them, but she felt sure that they were. She had not been able to locate the intercom they had used to talk to them earlier either.

Once again, her thoughts were interrupted by the grumblings of a man named Justin. "I hate that thing," he said again, gesturing to the alter with its wolf head motif.

"Then don't use it," another man named Alan said back to him from across the fire they were sitting around.

They had built a large communal house that was almost large enough for everyone. It had been an interesting experience. Alan Toban came up with the design based on an exhibit from his museum. Tomorrow they would build another two buildings to house the men and women separately. There had been some debate to build anything at all. Some people viewed building the shelters as giving up and settling into their new prison, but the arguments about sheltering the children had won most of them over.

They were an interesting cross section people, museum curators, electricians, plumbers, secretaries, tour guides, and teachers. People like Justin, Alan, and she had even found Homer's wife Wendy. People who would normally never meet but were suddenly forced together, to work together. So far someone had all the skills they had needed to call upon in order to get things done. But still, someone needed to try and find out where they were.

Nova quietly entered the communal house and nudged Wendy awake. "I'm going for a walk," she whispered to her. "Will you watch Mark and Miyuki until I get back?"

Still partly asleep, Wendy nodded. "Yes, I can do that. Where are you going?"

"I'm going to see what is out there." Nova said. Standing she walked back out into the night.

She took a few moments to look up and fix the north star, then set off walking to the north.

She passed plenty of trees, bushes, vines and other greenery. Everywhere she saw thick coats of grass that covered dark fertile soil. The further she walked, the denser the vegetation became, until she wound up climbing over a few bushes, but then on the other side, was a sparse desert. Rock hard soil, with no sign of life anywhere except for the forest she had just left. It felt a lot later than it was, she had been walking for a few hours by the time she left the forest.

Continuing into the desert, she continued to find nothing, alive or dead. Come to think of it, she had not seen any animals. No birds, squirrels, or anything else, only vegetation. Up ahead she saw something in the distance, and changed her course slightly to make for it. It looked like a black speck in the desert, too far away to make out any details about it.

Getting closer, it did get larger, but still was identifiable only as a black speck. It continued to grow, and oddly enough the ground it was resting on seemed to come up to her. It had to be some sort of illusion, but it certainly gave her a head ache while looking at it.

Stars, she could see stars in the speck, which was now a large black spot. Perfectly round that almost looked like it was standing on the ground, but there was no hint of a shadow. No, there was a shadow, her shadow which was visible on the horizon.

It was definitely an illusion then. She reached out and touched her shadow on the horizon. It was a wall then, a very carefully painted wall, which made the spot she saw a porthole. They were in some kind of ship.

Nova couldn't help wondering just what the others would think when she told them what she had discovered.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 16**

At last, everything was ready. His fleet was assembled, and stationed at an effective halfway point. A single warp to any of a dozen colony worlds. All that remained was confirmation of where the enemy would be. Captain Hawk knew that word would come soon. He knew the gambit would work, but he also knew it would only be a total surprise once, after that the enemy would be expecting it. Just as well, it would be that much more satisfying to destroy an enemy that knew he was coming.

He was also looking forward to seeing just what his new battle carrier could do in combat. It had the full range of weaponry, three turrets, its own fighter squadrons, and an impressive array of fixed cannons that could be deployed, in addition to a Deslock Gun. It even had the built in SMITE devices under the runways to effectively and instantly deploy its fighters at any point on the battlefield.

He also had three triple deck carriers at his disposal, in addition to missile ships, destroyers and battleships. The only thing he did not have ready access to were the planet destroyer missiles, but Deslock had banned their use after they nearly destroyed the Earth's solar system.

Hawk eagerly awaited the chance to make amends for his failure at Uther.

Wave after wave of Lupries ships fell upon the small colony world of Truna with the same deadly level of efficiency they used for each of their conquests. Not a single shot was wasted. They crippled or destroyed the small force of Gamilon destroyers that were guarding the world with their first shots. They did not worry about the brief warning signal that the lead Gamilon ship got off before its destruction. Nor did they find the small size of the defending fleet odd. The Gamilons, they figured, were too busy guarding their home system to worry about these outer worlds.

As soon as the destroyers were out of the way, the ships moved on to strafing the larger cities. They did not do much damage on their first pass, they did not intend to. They merely went low enough for their presence to be known.

Anti-aircraft fire arced up after the Lupries fighter planes, which gracefully danced around the laser fire. Then, after waiting for the all the anti-aircraft batteries to come into play, the fighters turned back down upon the world.

Again, without wasting a shot, the fighters, joined by their accompanying destroyers, fired down into the city. Each shot obliterating an anti-aircraft gun, and the city block that surrounded it.

The planes made another pass over each of the planets cities without firing any shots, to invite more anti-aircraft batteries to try their luck. None did.

Climbing back into orbit, the fighters landed back on their carriers. All the cloaking fields were dropped, revealing the entire fleet of 4 carriers, 6 battleships and 12 destroyers. The cloaking shields were not needed since the planet no longer had any defenders.

Hawk surveyed the enemy fleet that was laid out before him, completely unaware and without fighter cover. He did wish he could have arrived at Truna in time to save the defending ships, or at least the ground defenders, but at least he had gotten there before it was completely too late. The enemy fleet was only now beginning their decent to the planet. Their next step would be the landing of ground troops to begin the systematic destruction of everyone on the planet.

That would not be allowed.

"Launch fighters." He commanded.

One by one the fighters taxied onto the runway of his battle carrier, then engaged their boosters, accelerating to the end of the runway. Once they reached the SMITE device planted at the end and under the runway, the planes glowed and then vanished. The exercise was swiftly repeated, no sooner was one plane off, than another was already beginning its trip down the runway. The same thing was happening on each of the three Gamilon carriers, only they were capable of launching three to six fighters at a time and not just one or two.

In the distance, the fighters from Hawk's battle carrier were appearing above the enemy fleet, while the fighters from the first second and third carriers were appearing to the left and right of the enemy's fleet.

As soon as his fighters were launched, the runway deck plates on Hawk's battle carrier split, and rotated, to deploy the rows of fixed gun emplacements that were on the reverse side. Hawk did not deploy the Deslock-gun, since he didn't feel it would be necessary for this operation. He was showing remarkable restraint, since he so desperately wanted to use every weapon at his disposal to wipe out the enemy infestation, but he knew that if he missed, he could easily destroy the planet he was trying to protect.

The enemy carriers were the first targets. His battle carrier moved in, followed by the battleships. The destroyers stayed back to protect their own carriers in case any of the Lupries ships were to break away and target them while they were relatively unprotected.

"Attack," Hawk ordered with a cold chill in his voice that held no mercy for his opponents.

Before the enemy ships could so much as twitch, the Gamilon fighters and torpedo planes charged into the enemy fleet. The first wave of five torpedo planes made a run at the first carrier. They dove in horizontal with their target, then released the torpedo that made up the nose of their plane before peeling off. The first two torpedoes impacted, doing no significant damage. The third apparently struck either a fuel tank for their fighters or the bomb storage, because the main hull of the ship exploded with a tremendous force. The two remaining torpedoes were lost in the destruction of their target.

Another set of five torpedo planes targeted the second carrier, targeting its runway and hangers. Each of the five torpedoes hit its mark, causing tremendous explosions that rocked the carrier. They did not do enough damage to destroy the carrier, but the pilots were sure the carrier would not be able to launch any planes, if any of the planes even survived their strikes.

The third carrier was instantly crippled when the first torpedo launched against it arched up and away from its intended target to completely destroy the carrier's bridge. The carrier, which had been trying to maneuver to deprive the five attacking torpedo planes of kill shots, began drifting aimlessly. The remaining four torpedoes also struck the carrier blowing away the right side of the ship, enough damage to destroy the ship, but not before it collided with an escorting destroyer. Both ships were destroyed.

Planes were already lining themselves up to launch by the time the final five torpedo planes reached their target. Fighters sent to cover the torpedo planes strafed the runway in an attempt to keep the enemy fighters from launching before the ship could be destroyed. Each of the five torpedoes struck the carrier, with fire and smoke spewing from the holes they put into its hull, but it was not enough to slow the carrier down.

The torpedo planes arched back and away from the combat zone, now that they were all out of torpedoes, their part of the fight was over, at least until they could be reloaded on one of the Gamilon carriers.

The final Lupries carrier was still struggling to get its planes into space when it exploded. The shock cannon blast fired from the Gamilon battle carrier's first turret punctures the carrier's reactor, resulting in its immediate destruction. A second shock cannon blast from the battle carrier's second turret destroyed the final, crippled carrier.

The destruction of the enemy carriers was the cue the rest of the Gamilon fighter's took to withdraw from the combat zone. They did not want to be in the way when the big ships began to slug it out, because once they were clear, the Gamilon battleships all fired their forward fix mounted weapons, with spectacular results.

The Lupries battleships and destroyers were not sitting idle, they did their best to return fire, shot for shot, but their results were far lacking. One shot, which the gunners were sure was well aimed, simply bounced off the Gamilon battleship's hull.

The Gamilon missile ships fired their cargoes of missiles into the heart of the enemy fleet, which served to obliterate several of the enemies destroyers, and severely cripple one of their battleships. The battle carrier charged into the heart of the enemy fleet, constantly firing all of its side mounted weapons and turrets for devastating results to the enemy fleet.

An enemy destroyer broke away from the main force. Its captain intent on fleeing, inadvertently took it too close to the waiting Gamilon carriers and their escorting destroyers. The ship never had a chance, as the Gamilon destroyers circled it like sharks, constantly firing their shock cannons into it as they circled.

Gamilon fighters again entered the battle, picking their targets carefully to help the main fleet. They would target the engines of the enemy ships to slow them down, or take out some of their weapon emplacements. The fighters also served to completely destroy more than one battleship or destroyer.

On his bridge, Hawk directed the battle with all the skill and know how he could muster. Directing fighters to focus on one target or another, using his own ship to draw the enemy ships out of formation, and then having his battle ships or missile ships target the suddenly vulnerable flanks. When it was done, he had lost a few battleships, several planes, and his own battle carrier had taken severe damage, but not a single enemy ship survived.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 17**

Sandor stood on the video panel set into the floor of the briefing room; the images captured by the Time Radar of the Gamilon Home Fleet's destruction were playing under him, as well as battle footage from the Earth fleet's battle. The bridge personnel as well as the Black Tiger pilots were gathered around the sides of the panel, eagerly waiting for Sandor to begin his presentation.

As the video ran, different ships highlighted, and their outlines zoomed to the forefront of the image, while the battle footage continued to run behind them. A total of six different silhouettes filled the forefront. Each of the silhouettes was vaguely shaped like a wolf's head, in that they all had elongated noses, larger rounded hulls at the back of the nose, and upper fins that gave the illusion of ears.

Sandor cleared his throat, and walked to the exact center of the display panel with practiced precision. "After examining the Time Radar images, we have been able to determine six distinctly different ship classes in the enemy's fleet. They are in descending size: carrier, battleship, escort ship, boarding craft, large fighters, and fighters."

The battle footage disappeared from the video panel, to be replaced with a close up of the enemy's carrier. Sandor took a few steps off to the side to give his audience an unobstructed view of the computer rendered ship as it slowly spun to show all sides of the ship. He pointed towards the ships wide, flat nose section, "The upper front hull of their carriers serve as both a launching and landing platform, that enables it to land or launch virtually any type of fighter or shuttlecraft. We are still not sure exactly how many fighters they can hold, or if they each hold a wide variety of craft. At the base of the runway, are oversized loading doors, more than large enough for any of the fighters we have seen them deploy so far. The doors are armored, but because of their size, they take a while to open or close, during which time the inner ship is very vulnerable. Like most carriers, theirs are also very weak in defensive armaments, relying heavily on its own fighters for defense and offence."

Wildstar, Row and the Black Tiger pilots each nodded at Sandor's assessment while studying the carrier design. Each of them was already busy coming up with different attack strategies they would be eager to try out at the earliest opportunity.

The carrier was then replaced with the battleship, which had a more streamlined design, with gun turrets placed along the nose and upper hull sections. "Their battleships make use of some form of deflective armor, so anything other than a direct hit is not likely to do significant damage. Their shock cannons are not as powerful as ours, but do have a longer range. The nose of the battleship is a projected plasma weapon, it has a short range, and is not as powerful as our Wave Motion Gun, but it doesn't need to be. I haven't been able to find any major weak spots in its design, so we just need to hit it hard with our shock cannons.

"This is their escort ship," the image once again changed, this time showing a much smaller and much more streamlined ship. In design it seemed to be a cross between a battleship and carrier, containing a flat nose with a runway, and a turret on the upper hull. "It doesn't really fit into a traditional escort or destroyer design, but they seem to be deployed as escorts. They really aren't one ship type or another, but a blending. They have a limited fighter capacity, and weak offensive and defensive cannons, but they can fire kinetic missiles from their fighter launch bays."

The image cycled again, this time to show an even smaller ship, with a pointed wedge shaped nose, and a two barreled turret on the upper and lower hulls. "This ship was a surprise. It is about two to three times larger than our own Cosmo Hound, but is well armed for it's size. It is mainly a troop transport, capable of landing on a planet to rapidly deploy its troops, but it is also designed to ram and puncture a ships hull, and deploy its troops as a boarding party to attack the ship from within. From what little we could see, these are frequently suicide missions that the crews undertake with pride.

"This fighter is a complete mystery to us," Sandor gestured to the plane he had dubbed the large fighter. It was only slightly larger than the regular fighters, in that its central hull was greatly widened. "They are armed with a single laser. While they are significantly larger than the other fighters, we have no idea why or what is taking up that space. They may be carrying ECM suites, but there is no data to support that theory."

The final ship outline came to the forefront, the one representing the enemy's fighter planes. "Their fighters seem to be equal to our own Cosmo Tigers. They can be equipped for a variety of different capabilities, like ours, instead of having several different specialized planes like the Gamilons. They are equipped with both lasers and an assortment of missiles or torpedoes. In a dogfight, it will come down to pilot skill, our planes won't give us a technological edge."

Then, all of the outlines disappeared, to be replaced by a similar image of the fortress that the Yamato was searching for. It was immense, built on a scale far larger than any of the previous ships. It vaguely resembled an upside down cone, with a large box attachment jutting out from the bottom. Along the sides of the fortress, were a series of domes that completely obscured the inner hull, they were fewer at the top, increasing in number for each row along the way to the bottom. Some of the domes were transparent, revealing the cities that were contained within them, but most of the domes were opaque, leaving the observer no idea what they contained. Each of the domes was held in place by a metal arm that held them out from the central hull. The central hull, what could be seen between the domes, included docking bays, sensor suites, what were possibly weapon emplacements, and an assortment of other unidentifiable features.

Sandor took another step forward, and gestured to the new image with his pointer. "We got this image from the Andromeda, it is what we had assumed to be their primary battle fortress, however my analysis does not support that conclusion. Although we cannot be sure, since it did not open fire on any of our ships, the fortress does not have enough weapon emplacements to adequately defend itself." The image zoomed in to a small area between two of the domes that revealed a landing strip. "Most of the ship seems to be dedicated to landing bays, and various scanning equipment. In addition, each dome seems to be equipped with its own atmospheric systems."

"If it isn't a fortress," Wildstar interrupted, "then what is it?"

"In my opinion, this is a mobile research lab. It is some sort of worldship, it goes around collecting various specimens for study, like a menagerie or zoo. Each dome would represent a major exhibit, and they doubtless have an untold number of facilities within the primary hull."

"Why would they need to do that?" Yumi asked.

"They could be using it to study us to find our weaknesses or to devise attack strategies," Knox offered.

That was a thought that no one wanted to entertain. Wildstar asked, "Wouldn't an enemy be more likely to do that type of research before starting their attack?"

"Yes," Sandor said, again taking the center stage. "I think there is definitely more to it. They are studying us for a reason, and it may or may not be the same reason they are attacking us, I don't think the two are necessarily the same reason. It may be that they are attacking us because of something they hope to find in their research."

"Everyone needs to review this information, and be prepared to use it," Wildstar said. "Venture has plotted a course that should bring us into contact with the enemy tomorrow. In the meantime, go over the data, and get plenty of rest."

"Are any of your loved ones missing?" IQ-9 asked, disturbing Kei's contemplation of the stars from the Yamato's aft observation deck.

Kei couldn't help thinking it was a strange question for a robot to ask. He must be programmed for compassion, although there was no reason for it to be so inquisitive. Without turning from the view she asked, "Why do you ask?"

"People don't come here alone unless they have something to think about," the robot answered while moving up beside her. He also put his hands on the rail, giving the appearance of looking thoughtfully out at the stars.

She half smiled. It was true, she had come out to think and loose her self in the view. She had needed to go somewhere to think, and tending to her bonsai plants was not as reassuring as it had once been. Working with her pet plants was getting to be too much like her work in hydroponics, so she had wanted something different. She still didn't feel much like talking about it. "Is that why you are here?"

"Yes. I swore I would not allow any harm to come to her, and she is missing." The robot carefully lifted his hands off the rail, and clinched his metal fingers into fists.

A simple answer, yet why did it come as such a complete surprise to her? "I'm sorry. A female robot?" She said, although her voice sounded lighter than she intended.

"Do not make fun of me." IQ-9 answered, with a genuine rise of anger in his mechanical voice.

"I didn't mean to…"

"I have feelings!" the robot shouted, "I may be a robot, but I am no different from you." He then quickly backed up and rushed back out through the door.

Stunned, Kei continued to look back at the door, more than a little shocked at the robot's reaction. Definitely not how a robot should be reacting. Maybe she should inform whoever was in charge of maintenance about it.

This was a mistake, Adam Row thought as he and Yumi watched Wildstar go through his evening exercise session through the protective glass. It wasn't that Wildstar was not impressive, because he certainly was, as he jumped in the air and rolled across the ground to dodge simulated laser blasts before bringing up his own pistol to return fire. It was one of the most rigorous training exercises that the pair of them had ever seen. Row considered himself a good marksman, but he definitely realized he was not in his captain's league, nowhere near it. He silently resolved to increase his own workout. Chances are, he figured, Wildstar's experience had led him to this intense workout, and Row did not want to be caught unprepared.

Yumi for her part was equally impressed, but apparently for different reasons. "Isn't his form perfect?" she said when Wildstar hit his target after a leap. Her eyes never left Wildstar for an instant, closely watching his every movement.

The remark reminded him once more what a mistake it was to bring Yumi to the ship's gym; watching her lust over the captain was not his idea of a good date. If he was to turn it around, he needed to find something else to do. They had already been to the aft observation deck, and unfortunately he had not been able to get any time in the holography room. There really weren't that many options left on the ship.

"Want to get out of here, how about a trip to the ship's gardens?"

"Nah," she answered. "With my room mate, I'm kind of sick of plants right now."

"Hmmm, all right then, how about we con some ice cream out of the cook?" Row asked with a smile.

Finally she took her eyes off Wildstar and looked at Row with a matching smile. "Sure, that should be fun."

"Sandor, may I speak with you?" Kei asked.

Sandor didn't recognize the young woman who had found her way into his laboratory, so she was one of the new crewmembers. He couldn't even begin to imagine what she could want with him, all he really wanted to do was get back trying to solve the mystery of the enemies' ability to appear out of nowhere. Still, he supposed that some level of politeness was required. "I'm really very busy right now, but what did you need?"

The young woman, Kei, felt even more uncomfortable, torn between the need to report the problem and the desire not to bother Sandor. Better to get it over with now, than to bother him again later, she supposed. "I think there is a problem with the robot, IQ-9."

Sandor couldn't help giggling at that. IQ was always something of a flirt. He remembered the first voyage to Iscandar, IQ had looked for, and taken advantage of any opportunity to take a peek under Nova's skirt, and had even caused a bit of trouble when he proposed marriage to her. It had taken IQ some time to fully deal with the fact that Nova would never return the love he felt for her.

"I see," Sandor finally said, "Has he made some sort of unwanted advances towards you?"

A look of confusion crossed Kei's face. "Um, No. He just seems to be acting strangely. I bumped into him on the observation deck, and he said something about something missing, and then seemed to get really angry with me."

"So that's it," Sandor said. "I should have seen that one coming. It's nothing to worry about, IQ just has the same grief and sense of helplessness about this situation that we all do."

"You mean he really has feelings, someone he knew was taken hostage?"

Sandor nodded. "Of course, only his feelings are industrial strength. It will just take him a little time to adjust."

"He did seem to feel personally responsible for whoever this person is."

"The woman in question is Nova, the captain's wife, and I guess we all feel a little responsible. The ships that allowed the enemy to escape were my designs, and the scanners that have so far been unable to detect the enemy are also my design. If I had designed them better, none of this would have happened. That is why I have to figure out how the enemy is able to hide their presence from us."

Kei sighed, there was definitely too much needless guilt going around. "If the rumors are true, you could ask them tomorrow?"

Turning back to his monitors that were showing all of the available clips of enemy ships appearing out of nowhere, Sandor said "Somehow I doubt they will be willing to talk."

Shrugging, Kei asked, "Are you making any progress?"

Motioning to the monitor, Sandor said, "Take a look for your self."

"All the ships seem to be appearing out of a single plain."

"That's right," Sandor said, "Which means they are probably not using a SMITE device, or individually mounted cloaking fields. A form of dimensional cloak is still possible, but our subspace sonar would have picked that up. Do you think they could be using some form or teleportation gate?"

"I have no idea, that is not my area of expertise, I just work with biology and life sciences."

The door closed firmly behind Row as he returned to the room he and Jordy Venture shared. Venture was laying back on his bunk, looking back over the only magazine they had happened to pack, not really reading it, but just gazing into the pages.

"If you take Yumi out for a date, be sure to avoid the Gym areas. Nothing there but trouble," Row declared.

Venture couldn't help but to laugh. "OK. Date didn't go well, I take it?"

Row forced a smile. "Could have been worse, I suppose, but she just wasn't into it."

"Well, better luck next time," Venture said leaning back on his bunk, as Row collapsed into the desk chair. "You going to work on your letters to home?"

"No, I'm too depressed, I'll work on them tomorrow, after we find the worldship."

"Do you really think we will be able to find it and recover our people?"

Row nodded. "From the data, the finding part will be easy."

"I don't think our captain will stop until we do recover our people," Venture said.

"Is that a good or a bad thing?"

"I don't know. It depends on how he goes about doing it."

Derek Wildstar looked out the front window of the captain's cabin, although it still didn't quite feel like it was his. He glanced over at the face of Captain Avatar to draw support, and it did help a little to remember his old captain. The hardest thing was that he couldn't help thinking that Nova should be standing beside him, looking out at the stars like she had done so many times in the past.

Yes, tomorrow would be a big day. Possibly the day that would decide the fate of Nova and his children, himself, and so many others. It had to go well. He wasn't sure he knew how to live without her. He did know, that if they had been harmed in any way, then the enemy would pay dearly for it, he would see to that.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 18**

Lord Malathin of the Lupries Worldship studied the latest information on his Human captives with a strong level of cynicism. They seemed to be settling down nicely, building additional living huts and outhouses, even a large commons hut in the center of their town. It was strange to him since all of his preliminary data indicated the humans would be stubborn and resist to the last. "They must be planning something," he said absentmindedly, not even realizing he had spoken aloud.

"You think that just because the humans are finally doing the sensible thing by settling down here that they are up to something?" asked Cyani.

"Why else would they be so complacent?" Malathin replied while still looking over the data. "It says they have been going out to explore and forage for food outside their village. How far out have they gone?"

"A few have gone beyond our scanning range. But, does it really matter Lord Malathin?"

"Yes, it matters. If they fully realize the nature of their prison, they could possibly take advantage of that knowledge."

"Maybe they have realized the nature of their prison, and realized escape is hopeless, and that is why they have become so complacent so suddenly?"

Malathin took a moment to ponder the thought. "Some times, Cyani, you do have a good idea. I still wish we knew for sure."

Cyani did not seem to notice the implied insult. "Shall we begin the tests on the Humans?"

"Yes, we might as well get it over with."

"No, we need to put the nursery near the center," Nova insisted while pointing to the center of the hut diagram they had sketched into the dirt. "That way we can protect it, and we should be able to evacuate or hide the children easier."

"Ok, Ok." Alan relented, and rubbed out one of the outer boxes and drew it next to the center hut. "Is that better?" He did not especially like having been voted the chief architect of the group, but the knowledge he had gathered from working at his museum meant he was the only one of the group with the know how to build houses out of wood and mud. He had supervised and been the primary worker for most of the huts that they had built, and it had only made him appreciate the development of the nail all the more.

Nova and several of the others hunched over the diagram nodded approval to the new placement of the nursery hut. The largest building was in the center, with two dorms built to either side, one for the men and another for the women. The nursery building would be built in front of the main building, between the two dorms. An outhouse was to be built behind the central building. Other small huts were to be built around the two dorms. The first few would be for food preparation and storage. Additional small huts were being built so that the few married couples could stay together, with plans for other small huts to be built for others who just didn't like the community living of the two dorms. Finally, another ring of small huts were to be constructed around the quickly growing village.

"I'm not building all of those by myself," Alan declared.

"I think we are getting the hang of the construction process," someone else replied, with more than a little annoyance creeping into his voice.

"The main thing we will need you to build, Alan, is the outer ring of huts because they will need special attention," Nova said. "They need to be moveable, or at least set up so we can take them down easily."

Alan thought for a moment. "Ok, that won't be a problem. I'll just use the vines as rope and lash the sides together, instead of using mud as cement. They will be rather drafty."

"If this is an artificial environment," someone asked, Nova thought his name was John, "then do we actually have enough wood for all of this? And what about food?"

"We should have more than enough wood. They have provided us with a very large habitat. We won't know how large it an area we have for sure until our scouts get back."

Ito did not know how long he had been walking, silently counting his measured paces as he went. He wasn't even sure why he had accepted the job Nova had given him. Just like him to be swayed by a pretty face into doing something utterly stupid like walking in a straight line through a jungle, and into a desert. He could imagine his tombstone now, "Here lies Ito, died in the desert because a pretty woman told him to."

It was a strange walk; he couldn't help feeling the total absence of birds in the sky. Each time he looked up he expected to see one. It was an odd thought. He didn't even like birds.

Then, Ito's walk abruptly ended. He moved his right foot forward to take the next step, but it seemed to hit something causing him to fall forwards. His fall forward was also abruptly stopped, as his face hit the horizon painted wall in front of him. With a grunt of pain, Ito fell sideways to the ground.

"That is what I get for not paying attention," he thought as he climbed back to his feet. He looked to either side looking for a window like Nova said she had found. Sure enough, there was one a few feet along the wall.

The sight that greeted him when he looked out of the small window took his breath away. It wasn't a star field that he was looking at, although stars were plainly visible, it was a huge dome hanging out in space several meters beyond the dome he himself must be looking out of.

"Oh, yes, they are going to like the information he was going to bring back to the camp," he thought while trying to commit as much of the sight to his memory as possible. That, along with the number of paces it had taken him to reach the edge would give the others a good idea of exactly how large a prison they were in. With the other scouts going in different directions, they would soon have an excellent idea.

Ito turned back towards the camp and began his long trek back to the others when he saw the first flashes.

Lightning? Inside a ship, without even any clouds?

Thunder clapped unexpectedly, startling everyone at the camp. Then, Wendy screamed. It was not just a scream, but a blood curdling scream that came born of the deepest fear imaginable.

Nova turned and immediately began running towards the sound, not simply because Wendy was her friend, but also because Wendy was suppose to be safeguarding her children.

The scream continued, as Nova and the others gathered to see that Wendy hanging in mid air, apparently suspended on a lightning bolt that refused to dissipate. It simply stayed there, rippling electricity through Wendy's body as she screamed.

Just as suddenly, the lightning bolt was gone, leaving Wendy to fall to the ground in a heap.

Nova was not the first to reach her fallen friend, it was an elderly man she had not yet talked to much. "How is she?" Nova asked.

No one had thought to ask if the man had any medical training or not, but he at least acted like he knew what he was doing. "She appears to be fine, just unconscious."

Nova did not know what had happened, but she did know that whatever it was, she knew that the bolt that had struck Wendy could not have been lightning.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 19**

The Andromeda's exit from warp seemed slower this time, more painful as the battered and damaged ship winked back into existence just inside Mars orbit. The rest of the ships that had survived soon joined the Andromeda. The images made of the returning ships would soon be seen all around the world on the evening news.

News teams would be asking, had the fleet done all it could? Why had they returned without the hostages? Homer knew that is what the newsmen would be saying, because he couldn't help wondering the same thing himself. He felt ashamed for it, because he already knew the answers. He had been out on enough missions to know the type of things that could happen, and it was plain to see that the Andromeda had been through a fight, and too many of the other ships did not return at all. But when it came down to it, he didn't really care about any of that; all he wanted was to have Wendy back.

"Homer," Mizutani interrupted his thoughts, "radio the fleet. Have the least damaged ships form a perimeter, and we will move the Andromeda and the most badly damaged ships to dry docks immediately."

"Yes, sir." Homer answered absent-mindedly.

Commander Mizutani turned to the next closest aid. "Dispatch medical shuttles to rendezvous with the fleet. We need to get our wounded to hospitals as soon as we can."

Homer worked his controls, feeling numbness within him. "Earth Defense Headquarters calling Andromeda…" Homer settled into the professionalism of doing his job, barely holding back the urge to ask Kitano details about what had happened. The commander would do that himself, soon enough.

Kitano was both glad to see Earth again, but also felt shame to be returning without having accomplished what he had set out to do. But he had to think of his ship and crew… and the fleet as well. They were all too badly damaged to continue the search, and the sick bays were over crowded. There was no way they could survive another fight, and it was unlikely the enemy would surrender their hostages willingly.

Unobserved, a small Lupries scout ship made careful observations of the returning earth fleet. It made careful notes on where the ships exited warp, and where each ship headed. By the time it was done, it had tracked each ship to its patrol zone, and more importantly, had noted the location of each dry-dock, as the wounded ships returned home for repairs.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 20**

"Gladn!" Charon called, looking around for his young employee. "Get down here, Gladn."

"Yes, sir." Gladn replied and then climbed down the ladder from the store room. "I have finished inventorying the hard candies. I still have to do the rest of it."

"Don't worry about that now. I just finished the printing order for Muin. I need you to drop the shipment off to her. Her place is at 33 Krypt St."

Climbing down, Gladn checked the boxes over. "Any special instructions?"

"No. She just wanted the same type of drivel she always does. Some poetry she will give out at her shop to promote the ideals of Queen Guardiana, without actually mentioning her name. That woman is just too afraid of the state for her own good. Just drop them off and come back to finish the inventory."

Gladn nodded, and started moving the boxes outside and onto the delivery scooter that Charon had provided. It was a small one man scooter with room for a few small packages in the front, but it had a large anti-gravity cargo trailer behind it that could carry much larger cargos. Muin had ordered enough that Gladn would have to use the trailer.

Quickly loading the boxes on the trailer, Gladn set off for 33 Krypt St. Legend had it that Krypt St. was named for an old general who had been summarily executed by Deslock for treason, but had been exonerated of all charges years later. It was one of those old stories; no one would ever know the truth for sure.

Thanks to the speed of the scooter, Gladn arrived at his destination soon enough, it was a short mushroom shaped building just like thousands of others all over the planet. The oddest thing about the building was that it was a brighter silver color, while most of the traditionalists preferred dark colors.

Gladn started offloading the boxes as soon as he stopped, and stacked them next to the doorway. He was eager to get back, he liked Charon, and enjoyed spending time in the old shop.

He was so involved in his task that he nearly failed to notice the jingle of the door as it opened. The old lady Muin stood there and watched him for a few moments.

"You must be Charon's new running boy?" She asked.

"Yes." Gladn nodded.

"The old coot was too afraid to see me himself then."

"What Ma'am?" Gladn asked.

"Nothing, boy. If you are a good kid, you will pay close attention to what happens around you." Muin said, knowing full well that it would likely not give the boy enough warning if he did not know, but unwilling risk telling any more. "Tell Charon I will give him the rest of the payment tomorrow."

Finished unloading the boxes, Gladn nodded acceptance of the message and hopped back on his scooter. He had a lot more to inventory back at the shop.

Once more Hawk stood before Deslock and his Generals, at least this time he was not on trial. Of course, it would easily turn into a trial if he should overstep his bounds. He looked at each of them. There was Leader Deslock himself in the center, Talon always at his side. Generals Auctor, Peck, Carcer, Hoven, and Koffin were all in attendance as well. Each General usually had his own area of space to control, with no overlap of authority to invite infighting between them, the Gamilon invasion had changed that. Each of their territories had been invaded, and the different Generals were not use to working together. Only the strong personality of Deslock served to keep them all in line. In the background, Pleb was also keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings.

"Our new defensive fleet has scored major victories against the invading armies," Hawk began.

"Yet we have lost another three planets to the invaders, Captain." Auctor interjected.

"But, over the last several days we have destroyed several invasion fleets that will not be able to claim any more of our worlds." Hawk continued.

"Do you really think you will be able to eliminate all of the invading forces the way you have been going?" Carcer asked?

"Most, yes, but I have come to you today to ask for a change of plans. I think it is time we started to make the enemy think about defense as well."

Hoven seemed ready to speak, but Deslock waved him off and spoke himself. "What did you have in mind, Captain?"

"We have shown that our reaction fleet can take out theirs, so I propose we use it to take out their base on Uther, and bring the planet back under our control. Then the enemy will have to fall back, and worry more about defending the worlds they have already taken."

"Impossible." Said Koffin, "We don't have enough ships to mount such an operation."

"I agree," Auctor added. "Our intelligence reports show a vast fleet guarding Uther. The most we can hope to accomplish now is to slow or stop the enemy advance."

Deslock stood, the Generals who were going to speak or argue were instantly silent. "If the problem, Gentlemen, is a lack of ships, then I order that our current ship production be tripled. If there is a fleet too large for us to fight at Uther, then it is only a matter of time before we see it in use."

Peck turned to his leader, "Tripling our ship production will not be easy…"

Talon spoke next, cutting Peck off, "We can get extra ship builders by allowing the elderly to assist in production, and we can draw from the Militia. We can also speed the process by eliminating the nonessential equipment from the ships. No Staterooms, or holography rooms… A ship only needs Guns, armor, engines, and life support."

Peck nodded. "We will triple ship production."

"You may not attack planet Uther today, Captain Hawk," Deslock said, "but we will soon be ready. And when we are ready, you may be sure that we will take back every inch of space our enemies have taken from us, and they will pay for it in blood."

Hawk was disappointed that his request to reclaim Uther had been denied. He was eager to reclaim the world, and his honor for having lost it. He would still have to ship out immediately to rejoin his fleet. He needed to be ready to repulse the enemy's next attack, whenever or wherever that attack may come.

An air car took him directly to his shuttle on the launch pad, where armed guards were standing at attention. He barely paid the guards any attention as he climbed into the shuttle, but one of them held a piece of paper out to him. It was a letter addressed to him, in Jarria's handwriting. Hawk took the letter, and finished climbing into the shuttle, which immediately took off, headed towards his command battle carrier.

Hawk trusted his pilot to get him to his destination, so he opened the letter immediately, it had been too long since he had spoken with his love.

"My Dearest love… This is the second time you have been on Gamilon, and I have not been able to see you, to my deepest regret. I have some bad news for you. My father has not been pleased with many of the government's recent decisions, and he sees you as belonging to that government. That, combined with your disgrace at the battle of Uther…"

Hawk would not read any more. He knew what the bottom line of the letter would be, and that he would never see his Jarria again. Part of him wanted to crumple the letter up and throw it against the wall, but instead he folded it neatly, and placed it in his pocket. He had no time to worry about such things now. He could not allow himself to be distracted. He had a job to do, and he would see it done. For Jarria, and everyone else as well, if they wanted to see him again, or not.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 21

"Battle stations!" Wildstar commanded.

The main lights dimmed, and the familiar klaxon sounded, red lights flashed throughout the ship. Cosmo Tiger pilots jumped up from their ready room and slid down the quick tubes that quickly deposited them into the launch bay. Almost as quickly, each pilot found their plane, and began performing pre-launch checks. Gunners climbed into position behind the controls of each antiaircraft gun, within each turret gunnery teams of four climbed into their chairs. Deep in the heart of the ship, additional crews ran to man the side missile tubes, while other crews manned the torpedoes and depth charge launchers.

"All gunnery stations manned and ready, Cosmo Tigers ready to launch." Sakagage reported to Row.

Looking up from his preliminary targeting solutions, Row turned to Captain Wildstar. "All combat stations are ready, Captain."

In the engine room, fresh engineers rushed in through the main doors and their own tubes, every station was manned, and the Wave Motion Gun made ready, incase it was called upon. The engineers quickly made sure the engines were ready to operate at peak efficiency, the moment they were needed.

"The engine room is ready, Captain." Orion reported.

"Navigation systems check OK, Captain." Venture said.

Blast doors closed throughout the ship, segmenting the hallways into smaller sections, and sealing each compartment. In the sickbay, Doctor Sane was busy barking orders at Nurse Acre and the rest of the staff, to make sure the sickbay would be ready when it was needed, and then casually fixed himself a small drink. Kei, in hydroponics, double-checked the seals on the water system, and made sure the blast shields that had closed around each plant potter were secure so that if the room was exposed to space, all of the plants would survive. Knox made sure his marines were in their staging rooms, so they would be ready to board, repel boarders, or act as damage control as needed. IQ-9 made the rounds of the ship on his own, his internal communications and sensors tuned to the bridge so he would be able to go to wherever he was needed most at any given moment. In the kitchens, the last of the food stores were fastened down, and the cooking staff busied themselves on preparing lunch for the crew; each meal would be prepared for delivery to the various duty stations.

Sandor turned to Wildstar, "All ship stations report ready, Captain."

Next to Sandor's station, Lucas looked over at his superior, "I almost hoped we wouldn't find them."

Wildstar gave each crewmember a quick glance. They were all ready, although Zandra looked very nervous. Although Wildstar knew that she was just the only one who was actually showing her feelings. He would be more worried if her role was more combat oriented.

"Have they noticed us?" Wildstar asked.

"Negative. There is no change, they are just sitting there," Eager answered.

Could it be a trap, Wildstar wondered. Only one way to find out for sure. "Let me know if there is any change."

The Worldship was in orbit around the second planet of the system. The system included 4 planets around a red sun. Wildstar hoped that the solar flares were playing hell with the enemy's radar, but he couldn't count on that. Should he try to approach them from the sun, or attempt to come around and trap the enemy between themselves and the sun? The third planet was the answer… if the enemy had not yet seen them, they could come up behind the third planet and be much closer to the enemy Worldship, then they should be able to trap the ship in the system. "Full combat speed to the third planet."

"Aye, sir." Venture answered, pushing the throttle controls to maximum, and adjusting the heading with the flight stick. Venture had no doubts now and for the moment forgot he hated his captain.

Row did not allow himself to feel anything. He focused entirely on his target, waiting for it to come in range, and his captain's order to fire.

The ploy did not work. "Worldship is powering up their engines," Sandor shouted.

Wildstar found himself standing, and took a moment to tell himself that it was now someone else's job to man the combat station. "Row, fire a warning shot… let them know we are not ready for them to leave. Venture, forget the third planet, angle us at the Worldship."

Yamato's first turret fired, its three energy beams wrapping around each other to form a single beam of powerful destructive energy. The beam cut in between the Worldship and the empty space it was attempting to reach.

"Launch Cosmo Tigers, don't let that ship leave this system."

Just below the Yamato's auxiliary engines, the launch platform lowered and plane after plane launched into the vastness of space. Each plane immediately fell into formation before looping around towards the Worldship.

"Our fighters are moving around to cut the enemy off… they are outside our line of fire." Sakagage reported.

"They are trying to move away," Eager said.

"Get us more speed. Row, keep firing at them, don't let them keep a set course," Wildstar ordered.

Looking intently ahead, Venture pulled the lever to adjust the ships speed, and made another slight adjustment to the ships heading. The ships engines flared to life, propelling the ship ever faster.

Row made his own adjustments to his control panel, and then trusted to the individual gunners to make the fine adjustments. Each of the three front turrets fired, their beams arching past the Worldship, each one forcing the Worldship to alter course away from its escape, which slowed the Worldship down.

Lord Malathin marched onto the bridge of the Worldship, and took a quick look at the tactical displays, before giving Cyani a nasty look. "Cease all evasive action. Set a straight course out of the system."

"But, Lord, we are under attack!"

"They are not trying to hit us, most likely they hope to get their people back intact. Their fire is intended to slow us down so they can trap us in the system."

"Enemy fighters closing!"

An explosion echoed through the ship, and rocked the bridge. "What was that?"

"An attack on our secondary propulsion system."

"Why haven't our fighters already launched? Launch our fighters immediately, and contact the fleet for help." Malathin commanded.

The first wave of Cosmo Tigers peeled away from the Worldship after making their first attack run. Their retreat from the Worldship also served to draw enemy fire, as fighters began launching from the Worldship.

The second wave of Cosmo Tigers targeted the enemy fighters and landing bays with missiles and strafing runs. Most of the second wave of Cosmo Tiger attacks had to be aborted as the Worldship's anti-aircraft guns opened fire. Two of the Cosmo Tigers exploded under the barrage.

"Now, they are slowing us down." Malathin observed. He knew full well that there was no way his fleet would be able to send support ships to his aid any time soon, and the Worldship's weapons were not large enough to be a match for a battleship. Instead he would have to use cunning to escape. "Connect me with the commander of the attacking ship."

On the Yamato, Wildstar's frustration grew when the enemy captain had figured out that he did not wish to damage the Worldship. If not for the Cosmo Tigers harassment, the Worldship would have already escaped. The Yamato only needed to get a little closer before they could accurately use their main guns to destroy the enemy's engines without causing any substantial damage to the rest of the ship. Then he would have to risk an invasion force, which he really did not want to do. When they had invaded the Comet Empire, their losses had been unacceptably high, but he knew his Space Marines would be up for the challenge.

"The enemy commander wants to speak with you, Captain." Yumi said.

For some reason, that worried Wildstar. "Don't let up on any of our attacks. Put him through, Yumi."

The image of Malathin appeared on the Yamato's main video panel, his expression was smug and confident. "I am Lord Malathin of the Lupries Worldship, I assume you feel your assault on my vessel is justified?"

"I am Captain Derek Wildstar of the Earth ship Yamato. You raided our planet and took several of our citizens. If you return them, we will cease our attacks."

"Lets see… Earth. Ah, yes, you mean the human population. Of course, if that is all you wanted, you should have said so from the beginning. You are welcome to them." Malathin then broke the connection.

"One of the domes has just broken off of the Worldship." Eager shouted, "Its headed for that sun."

"What!? Cease-fire. Venture, change course to intercept that dome!" Wildstar franticly ordered. How could the enemy do such a thing? At least they weren't just spacing their captives, but this way they were making sure he was too busy rescuing the hostages to prevent the Worldship from escaping.

Venture franticly worked the control sticks to change course, and then he had to take evasive action to avoid ramming the dome as it passed them on its way to the sun.

"Row, fire the rocket anchor into the side of that dome! Stop the ship!"

Row hesitated slightly, unsure exactly where the control was, but once he found it, he responded quickly. He rotated the control to aim it at the rapidly passing dome before firing the anchor.

On the side of the ship, the anchor folded into a more aerodynamic arrow shape, exposing jets as it angled away from the hull, before shooting out, trailing a long chain that connected it to the ship. The anchor pierced the side of the dome, and held fast as the Yamato's braking thrusters activated, eventually stopping Yamato and slowing the dome's progress. For a moment Wildstar thought the chain may brake, but it held strong. He would make sure that the chain was checked for weakened links as soon as they had some down time.

Conroy, the leader of the Cosmo Tigers, franticly radioed the ship. "We can't stop it. The Worldship is about to warp."

"Worry about that later," Wildstar said. "All Cosmo Tigers are to check the dome and then return to the ship. Ready the Cosmo Hound and medical shuttles for launch. Row, Venture, Sandor follow me." Wildstar was worried that he may have injured some of the hostages, or compromised the structural integrity of the dome when he used the Rocket Anchor to stop it. Wildstar's feeling that the operation had failed increased as he watched the Worldship wink out of existence as it entered a space warp. He jumped from his seat and headed for the Cosmo Hound.

IQ-9 was the first to board one board the Cosmo Hound, followed shortly by Wildstar, Venture, Sandor, Row, Dr. Sane and a medical team. Wildstar ordered them to lift off as soon as he was seated in the front next to Venture. Row hastily climbed up into the top gun turret.

Part of the Yamato's side armor hinged downward becoming the Cosmo Hound's launching pad. The Cosmo Hound was a large landing craft that was too large to fit in the regular landing bay. It balanced heavy weaponry with speed and maneuverability; and it could be adjusted to fill almost any mission.

"The dome appears to be unarmed," Conroy's voice echoed from the communications console.

"Thanks Conroy, get back to the ship and refuel." Wildstar ordered.

"Roger."

The Cosmo Hound lifted off vertically and flew towards the Dome that was still secured with the Yamato's rocket anchor.

Sandor leaned over Row and Wildstar's shoulders trying to get a better look. "Take another pass, I want to get a better look at the damage," Sandor suggested, then went back and traded places with Row in the gun turret.

"Strange," Sandor said, more to himself than anyone else.

"What is it Sandor?" Wildstar asked.

"Send IQ-9 out to investigate. He should be able to get a better idea of what is inside with a smaller risk to whatever is inside."

"Go ahead, IQ." Wildstar said. He could tell from experience that Sandor knew something, but didn't want to say anything about it until he was absolutely sure. One way or another it was not going to be good news, he thought, which he didn't want to think about since he desperately wanted his wife and kids to be on the inside of the dome.

"Yes, Wildstar." IQ-9 replied, while moving into the airlock. More than anything else, the robot needed to see Nova again.

Once in the vacuum of space, IQ activated his jets and flew over to the impact point of the anchor. It had punctured all the way into the interior of the dome, but there was not enough of a gap for him to see inside around the anchor. Seeing little other option he used the cutting torch built into one of his fingers to cut a larger hole into the side of the dome so he could get a better look.

He held the freed circle of metal in place, to prevent too much of the air within the dome from escaping, but moved it away long enough to get a good view of what was inside. He was surprised at how easy he was able to do so.

"Wildstar."

"Yes, IQ-9?"

"There are no humans in this dome, but the beings that are there are already dead," IQ-9 reported with more than his usual monotone.

Wildstar slammed his hand down on the communications panel, and opened up a channel to the Yamato. "Yumi, have Eager calculate the Worldship's destination, and send all of our data to Homer on Earth, so he can double check our figures." Wildstar cut the channel and sat in the silence of his conflicting emotions.

Dr. Sane opened up his own channel to the other medical ships. "Secure the leaks in that dome right away! Be sure to save me a sample of whatever atmosphere is inside, and bring some of the bodies to the ship's sickbay!"

Row looked up at Sandor in his gunnery chair. "How did you know?"

"Because of the amount of air escaping around the rocket anchor, there wasn't enough pressure behind it for there to have been enough atmosphere inside the dome to support human life."

"How do you know it didn't all leak out in the time it took us to get here?"

"The leak is too small… besides I suspect that if there had been enough atmosphere inside that dome, then it would have ruptured when we punctured it," Sandor soberly answered. Sandor climbed down and looked over at Wildstar, whom he knew was filled with self-doubt. It would take Dr. Sane hours of explaining to convince Wildstar that the people had been dead long before they had punctured the dome.

Venture was filled with doubts of his own. Surely Wildstar could have done something differently. How many pilots had they lost, and all they had accomplished was to save a dome full of alien bodies. He opened his mouth to say so, when the look on his captain's face reminded him of exactly what was at stake for the captain personally. "Um, Captain? What do we do now?"

When Wildstar remained silent, Sandor answered. "Take us back to Yamato. We have a lot of work and planning to do."

Malathin's hologram appeared before Sodoman, barely keeping his anger in check.

"Why do you disturb me, Malathin?" Sodoman asked.

"High Lord Sodoman… the Yamato was able to see through our warp tricks and found us."

"You destroyed them, of course?"

"With what, High Lord? All I have at my disposal are a few cannons and fighters. They took us by surprise, and wiped out most of our offensive capability in seconds."

"So, you are telling me that you are unable to handle your position?" Sodoman asked, or rather threatened.

Malathin realized that this conversation could easily turn out more disastrous for him than the Yamato's attack if he wasn't careful. "I can handle my position, and the Worldship, High Lord, but the Worldship is not a warship, and it cannot defend itself from an attack by a warship."

Sodoman frowned.

"What the Worldship requires, High Lord, is an escort of ships to aid in its protection and defense. If we had made an active attempt to engage the Yamato, we would have certainly lost many of our habitats and the subjects they contain, and we cannot risk that. Not yet."

Finally Sodoman nodded. "Very well. I will get you escort ships. But if you are again attacked by a lone ship, and do not manage to obliterate it with your new combined resources, I will be forced to reevaluate your position."

Sodoman broke the connection.


	23. Chapter 23

Author's notes at the bottom.

Chapter 22

Thunder rolled in the distance, echoing off the cloudless sky, the ground lurched. Alan lost his balance and fell to the ground with a stunned look on his face. Ito, who had been holding onto a doorframe rushed to help but fell himself when the ground lurched again in time with another echoing roll of thunder.

Nova had been able to keep her balance, crouched down outside the hut that her children and most of the others were in. Another rumble of thunder and lurch. She thought she felt the vibrations coming up through the ground. Whatever was happening was happening elsewhere, likely far from their own section of whatever ship they were in.

Ito and Alan decided not to stand back up, but instead found more dignified sitting positions, and Nova couldn't help but smile at the comical movements they went through.

A sudden metallic clang echoed across the sky, much louder than the muffled thunder had been, accompanied by a much softer lurch. Nova tried to think, she felt sure the thunder was explosions of some attack on the ship they were in, but she had no idea what the more metallic sounds were. She had no idea who was attacking the ship, if it was some force mounting a rescue mission, or attacking for revenge, or if the ship had stopped somewhere to take on more hostages. Maybe it was Derek.

She felt a slight sense of nausea, briefly, out of nowhere. If the sensation had not been so similar to the many warps she had been on in the past, she would have dismissed the sensation completely. She stood and waited, but there was no more thunder, no more lurches. The ship had warped away from danger, away from Derek… dashing the brief flicker of hope that he had come to save them. She walked into the hut and sat next to Wendy.

"What happened?" Wendy asked.

"I think this ship was just under attack, but we were warped away," Nova answered. "How are you doing?"

"I've felt better. Still thirsty."

"We'll get you some more water. Whatever it was they hit you with dehydrated you severely," Nova replied, although she did wonder at the purpose of the lighting that had struck Wendy, if it was an accident, some form of intense scan, or simple torture. She stood to get more water for Wendy, and to make sure her children were taking things as well as they seemed to be. She would have been frightened at an earthquake at their age, but with everything that was going on, they were putting on a brave front.

Still, Nova was not sure what she should be feeling, happy that they had survived the attack, or disappointed that they had not been rescued. She didn't even know who had been attacking; it easily could have been someone worse than their current captors but still, it could have been Derek.

Outside Ito, Alan and the rest of the scouts gathered around Nova where she drilled them with questions about what they had seen on their expeditions, dragging details out of them that they had not even realized they had noticed at first. Slowly a clear picture formed of the inside and outside of their prison revealed itself as they combined the details in a diagram scratched in the sand.

It was, as near as they could tell, a perfect circle covered with a dome, and an additional support from the main ship reaching under to the center of the habitat for support, and as a mount for various umbilicals. They imagined that there must be another way into the dome from above somewhere, or that there was an underground path leading into the dome through the support.

"Somehow we need to gain access to that support strut and follow it to the main body of this ship," Nova announced. "If we can do that, we will at least be able to think about how to escape. Anybody know how we can find one of their entry ports?"

"I think we will be better off if we make our own," Alan said.

"How?"

"That will be the easy part," Ito said, "We'll dig."

"Right," said Alan, "The central common building is almost in the center of this dome, we will construct another hut for communal living and use the common building as cover for our hole."

"And we can hide the dirt we bring out like they do in all those prison break out movies," Ito added excitedly.

"Well, then," Nova said, "It looks like we have a plan."

Author's Notes:

A while back an artistic friend of mine suggested doing a Yamato web comic. If it had been suggested a week before I would have said I could never come up with a worthy Yamato story, but when he asked the Worldship storyline came to me almost all at once after thinking about the formulas the Yamato series used. I don't remember why but the artists had to back out… and while I am a visual thinker I have no sense of proportion so drawing people is out. I wound up cutting a few plot lines that were simple eye candy and Matsumoto style fluff and starting the thing in prose. At this point I am not sure I am going to continue it any further, and move some of the original characters and their subplots over to other projects. Im hoping someone will be able to talk me out of not finishing it as it is the most contorted story I have come up with so far. The three main plots are plotted to end around chapter 120 or so.

As for Yumi… she is a few years younger than Jordy and appeared in a single episode of Comet Empire… Im not sure if her sequence was cut from Star Blazers or not.

Still, I hope that I can find the encouragement to continue this story… but even if I don't, anyone who wants more information on what was planned is welcome to ask.


End file.
